Systems and methods for transitioning a vehicle from an autonomous driving mode to a manual driving mode

This invention describes a system for self-driving cars to predict when they might lose their ability to accurately know their position. It uses vehicle sensors to scan the road ahead for features and simulates future positions to identify where there might not be enough recognizable features for the car to localize itself. If such a "localization-failure position" is predicted, the system initiates a handover from autonomous to manual driving, and can notify the driver and calculate the distance to that problematic spot.