Waymo's Driverless Robotaxis Are Now Doing Airport Trips in Phoenix (theverge.com) 12
Waymo is sending its fully driverless cars to handle some of the trickiest types of passenger pickups you can muster: airport trips. From a report: The company announced that customers flying in and out of Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport will now be able to hail one of the company's "rider only" vehicles, a sign that the Alphabet company is willing to take on more risk as it seeks to bolster the case for a fully autonomous taxi service. Waymo is also expanding the size of its service area in both Phoenix and San Francisco as it seeks to send the message that despite all the recent dour headlines about the future of autonomous vehicles, its robotaxi business is still going strong.
"No waitlist, no NDAs, no hours restriction, 24/7 service," said Waymo product chief Saswat Panigrahi in a briefing with reporters. (Panigrahi's references to hours restrictions is a subtle swipe at rival robotaxi service Cruise, which is restricted to operating its fully driverless cars in San Francisco only at night.) Of course, Waymo is not without its own restrictions. The company is still waiting to get the final approval from the California Public Utilities Commission before it can begin to charge for rides in its rider-only vehicles in San Francisco. As such, Waymo is only offering unpaid rides to certain members of the public, as well as employees and their guests, in its driverless vehicles.
"No waitlist, no NDAs, no hours restriction, 24/7 service," said Waymo product chief Saswat Panigrahi in a briefing with reporters. (Panigrahi's references to hours restrictions is a subtle swipe at rival robotaxi service Cruise, which is restricted to operating its fully driverless cars in San Francisco only at night.) Of course, Waymo is not without its own restrictions. The company is still waiting to get the final approval from the California Public Utilities Commission before it can begin to charge for rides in its rider-only vehicles in San Francisco. As such, Waymo is only offering unpaid rides to certain members of the public, as well as employees and their guests, in its driverless vehicles.
Airport pickup is (Score:2)
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So it's a slightly glorified Disney ride?
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by calling it an ride we can get off if you get hurt in an crash.
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"one of the EASIEST scenarios. Even though it looks chaotic, an airport road is basically a loop with a very well defined flow of cars and a pretty small, organized pickup area."
I guess they do it the other way 'round, they bring people TO the airport, that way they do have to learn only a single destination. :-)
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Let me introduce you to FLL, Fort Lauderdale Florida. The Delta pickup area is littered with crossings where the people and traffic exiting the garage *and* the terminal don't look at the oncoming lane of taxies, buses, ubers and crazy 305 and 905-ians that drive down here.
The parking garage is parallel to the Delta pickup road and has many crossings. Other terminals are a bit friendlier.
Heh. HAHAH! Machines don't stand a chance in this airplane patch. Not current ones, anyway. I fly here often and I
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Dang it. Meant "305 and 954-ians" The OG area codes for Miami and Broward.
905 (broward) and 786 (Miami) are Johnny-Come-Latelies in the past 20 or so years.
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I am batting a thousand today. 905 is ontario canada. 754 is the "new' ft lauderdale area code.
I'll go away now. x.x
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one of the EASIEST scenarios. Even though it looks chaotic, an airport road is basically a loop with a very well defined flow of cars and a pretty small, organized pickup area. No bicycles, children or bums wandering around. Hardly any traffic lights. Hardly any cross streets.
To me, airport dropoff areas seem like a mix of parking lot and urban streets. The big problem is that there is indeed a lot of chaos. Ask drivers what they believe the rules of the road are at airports, e.g., who has the right of way among cars and pedestrians, and you'll likely get a smattering of "don't hit anything" and blank stares. When there are few cars, driving is easy because driving decisions don't matter. When there are a lot of cars, then those cars tend to do unusual things, like double pa
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Either way, they have a working service in commercial operation. Nobody else is even close in the US. There are some firms operating in China.
Poor Musk wouldn't be happy, if he wasn't spending all good time buggering up Twitter.
can it deal with this location? (Score:2)
https://www.google.com/maps/pl... [google.com]
"Robotaxis" is a terrible name. (Score:2)
You could read it as "Robo-taxis" or "Robot-axis" -- i.e., like the bad guys in WW2.
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