Ford recently obtained patents for two driving modes that would use touchscreen technology to steer an autonomous vehicle (aka driverless car). This was in response to the need for taking over the car in an emergency or manual situation whereby you needed to assume control of the direction your car was taking.

Examples of such a situation would be if you needed to force a lane change or drive through an area the car did not recognise. However, the patents indicated that some measure of control will remain with the AI, such as the accelerator or brake (or both), leaving only the direction of the car in your control.

Controlling the car would be in the style of games like Real Racing 3, where the accelerometer and gyroscope control the front wheels of the car. It would have to be intuitive, since you were controlling a big hunk of metal speeding down the road.

Such patents do not necessarily determine which path Ford will take in future. There are still many security and performance concerns that need to be addressed. This technology could potentially be used to hijack a car and the lag would need to be low enough to ensure speedy response times.

Such patents only prove that no matter how driverless cars become, there will always exist a point where you might want to take over, even for a moment.

(Source)