Alphabet's Waymo To Test Its Autonomous Driving Technology In Over 10 New Cities (reuters.com) 23
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Alphabet's self-driving unit Waymo announced on Wednesday it plans to expand testing of its autonomous driving technology in over 10 new cities in 2025. After testing the Waymo Driver in multiple cities, the company says the technology is adapting successfully to new environments, leading to the expansion. In addition to ongoing trips to Truckee, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Upstate New York and Tokyo, the expansion includes testing in San Diego and Las Vegas, with more cities yet to be announced.
"During these trips, we'll send a limited fleet of vehicles to each city, where trained human autonomous specialists will be behind the wheel at all times," a spokeswoman for Waymo said. The testing will begin with manual driving through the densest and most complex parts of each city, including city centers and freeways. Waymo plans to send less than 10 vehicles to each city, where they will be manually driven around for a couple of months, according to The Verge, which first reported the news.
"During these trips, we'll send a limited fleet of vehicles to each city, where trained human autonomous specialists will be behind the wheel at all times," a spokeswoman for Waymo said. The testing will begin with manual driving through the densest and most complex parts of each city, including city centers and freeways. Waymo plans to send less than 10 vehicles to each city, where they will be manually driven around for a couple of months, according to The Verge, which first reported the news.
we will do in the summer to skip the ice and snow! (Score:2)
we will do in the summer to skip the ice and snow!
Re:we will do in the summer to skip the ice and sn (Score:4)
I expect that they're not ready for the ice and snow even in a place they know about.
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I think it also has the advantage of not "panicking" if it does slip/slide a little unlike many drivers who will react inappropriately and cause an accident.
People that drive up here deal with it enough most people are capable of driving safely, but it’s so true. I’ve been saying since I was a teenager you should have to pass a sliding test. Basically show you know how to start, control, and end a slide on ice, snow, or similar surface and you don’t need to go fast. Most people can learn to do it without thinking after just a little practice, it’s super chill and easy to learn on ice at 2-3 mph. This would prevent so many people fro
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Long term maybe, but not in the short term.
Most self-driving is primarily visual, but driving in bad winter conditions requires a lot more senses. Audio and vibrations to tell you what the road surface is like, balance to tell you if the car is behaving as expected (or if your traction is bad), subtle clues in the road surface.
It's learnable in principle, but there's a lot of special cases that don't come up in summer driving.
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Re:we will do in the summer to skip the ice and sn (Score:4, Interesting)
I expect that they're not ready for the ice and snow even in a place they know about.
No joke. I’m in Minnesota but usually away from superior where we get lake effect snow. The Upper Peninsula gets quite a bit and anyone that lives in the upper Midwest or around the lakes knows when it is blowing, or gets deep, or is around freezing so it’s soft and sticky, or so cold it won’t melt off and builds up, all of those crap the bed of most every sensor system in every vehicle. It’s simple, even sensors that can see ok through snowfall do not work with 4” of ice and snow over them, and it happens fast so it does not work to clean them because they foul in minutes. In fact, it can be difficult for humans to see and navigate in and we still have superior reasoning, prediction, and spatial visualization in the real world.
Are these most days? No, it’s even snowing less these days. But on the days it does happen, not getting stranded is pretty important.
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No Boston? (Score:2)
I want to see one of these try to get out of Logan through Chelsea to avoid the tolls.
Good luck with the double-parked cars and complete lack of any sort of lane markings. At one intersection I swear it's necessary to jump the median.
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They started in San Francisco, which can be pretty chaotic. Boston probably has different driving styles and customs but double parking is definitely something they've seen before. Waymo goes all the way back to 2009, I recall getting passed by one on my bicycle on a public road in 2015. That was, gosh, ten years ago already.
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Boston is worse than San Fran.
Better training... (Score:2)
If they come here to San Antonio they better have trained their AI on dodging mattresses and pedestrians who treat jaywalking as an Olympic sport.
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I'd mod your post "troll" too if I had mod points. Of course, every business is looking for a profit. Duh! But Waymo's safety track record is stellar, better than human drivers. If they were to come to my city, I'd definitely try them out. I'd feel safer than I would with an Uber driver!
Overlords (Score:1)
So we've got several million gig drivers (Score:2)
Now right off the bat you can take the unemployment rate and roughly double it to 8%, frankly more closer to 10% to account for people who stopped looking because they're unemployable. Figure anyone over 50 who doesn't have a college degree and isn't settled into
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Your predictions of the takeover of driverless taxis is more optimistic than even a Waymo marketing exec! They've been offering rides now for 7 years, expanding from 1 city to now...13. I mean, that's a 1,300% increase! Wow! Just 20,000 more cities to go! In 5 years? Really?
Waymo hasn't put Uber out of business yet in *any* city, not even Phoenix, where they started. Uber is doing just fine there, thank you. And the unemployment rate there is 3.5%. If Waymo can't dent the unemployment rate in even one city,
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You could always retire from your Soros funded position as senior communist slashdot troll. That would free up at least one job, at this point everything counts.
You know there’s more efficient ways to do welfare than have people do unnecessary work. Why not pay people to run on a treadmill or watch Netflix?
I like that they can name all kinds of towns All O (Score:2)
Over 10 (Score:2)
Farnsworth: That's in more than 10 cities?
Leela: How many more?
Farnsworth: 11