Identifying a customer of an autonomous vehicle

A control system of a vehicle configured to operate in an autonomous driving mode, the control system comprising one or more processors configured to:

• maintain historical information for one or more pedestrian objects detected in an external environment of the vehicle;
• determine, based on the historical information, at least one predicted walking path of each of the one or more detected pedestrian objects;
• determine, based at least on the at least one predicted walking path of each of the one or more detected pedestrian objects, whether a given one of the one or more pedestrian objects corresponds to a customer of the vehicle;
• and
• responsive to a determination that the given pedestrian object corresponds to the customer, perform, to improve wayfinding of the customer to the vehicle at a pickup location, at least one of:
• (i) cause presentation, on a client device of the customer, of a notification associated with the wayfinding of the customer to the vehicle at the pickup location, (ii) adjust the pickup location, or (iii) cause modification to a driving operation of the vehicle in the autonomous driving mode.

A non-transitory computer-readable recording medium having instructions stored thereon, the instructions, when executed by one or more processors of a computing system, implement a method comprising:

• maintaining historical information for one or more pedestrian objects detected in an external environment of a vehicle configured to operate in an autonomous driving mode;
• determining, based on the historical information, at least one predicted walking path of each of the one or more detected pedestrian objects;
• determining, based at least on the at least one predicted walking path of each of the one or more detected pedestrian objects, whether a given one of the one or more pedestrian objects corresponds to a customer of the vehicle;
• and
• responsive to determining that the given pedestrian object corresponds to the customer, performing, to improve wayfinding of the customer to the vehicle at a pickup location, at least one of:
• (i) causing presentation, on a client device of the customer, of a notification associated with the wayfinding of the customer to the vehicle at the pickup location, (ii) adjusting the pickup location, or (iii) causing modification to a driving operation of the vehicle in the autonomous driving mode.