I noticed that too. I was actually patenting after I published my post on this earlier today because I thought such a quick turnaround was impossible and the patent was not in fact granted. But it was! Really mind-blowing considering we've seen some take four or five years.

I was surprised that Sebastian Thrun is not on the inventors' list. At least two CMU robotics types are among those on the list. Perhaps it speaks to the depth of Google's robotics expertise?

That's incredibly fast for the PTO.