[ad_1] Alphabet is also contributing, but it appears to be in the minority this time around. Waymo was vague about how it would use the funds, saying only that this would help “our people, our technology, and our operations.” One look at Waymo’s business suggests that it has plenty of need for cash, though. In […]
Category: waymo
Ex-Waymo driver arrested for causing one of its vans to hit his car
[ad_1] Based on the on-board videos captured by a couple of Waymo vehicles in the area (see below), Tang braked hard in front of them in an attempt to force them to rear-end his car. Authorities said Tang admitted to “brake-checking” the vehicles. While the Waymo vans are equipped with self-driving technology, their back-up drivers […]
Waymo’s self-driving vans will carry UPS packages in Phoenix
[ad_1] The program kicks off this quarter (that is, no later than March). Waymo had already grown its AutoNation deal to include a car part delivery test in 2019. UPS has been busy, too, having just ordered 10,000 electric trucks from Arrival for crewed deliveries. The two see this as part of a “long-term plan” […]
Waymo’s fully-automated shuttles are picking up riders around Phoenix
[ad_1] At the beginning of the month, Waymo said it was close to offering autonomous rides with no backup driver. This announcement suggests that it’s plans are on schedule. Unfortunately, Waymo has not confirmed when it will open the driverless rides to all customers in Phoenix, and users who have signed up for the service […]
Waymo shares some of its self-driving car data to help researchers
[ad_1] The Waymo team explained this as an opportunity to improve the industry as a whole. It hoped he data would improve not just other self-driving vehicles, but also general concepts like perception, behavior prediction and scene understanding. Those could help with computer vision tasks, particularly robotics and other areas where recognizing objects could prove […]
Waymo uses evolutionary competition to improve its self-driving cars
[ad_1] The approach regularly has the networks compete against each other, with weaker examples being replaced by stronger “progeny” that are copies of the better-performing networks with slightly tweaked parameters (just as a child isn’t a perfect clone of its parent). This automatically gets rid of the poorer-performing networks while saving Waymo from having to […]
Luminar’s cheap LiDAR could be a big boost for autonomous vehicles
[ad_1] Luminar’s Iris LiDAR systems will cost less than $1,000 per unit for production vehicles or $500 for a limited version, according to TechCrunch. This is a massive saving from other LiDAR systems on the market today, which run up to $75,000 for a top of the line unit from developer Velodyne. However, Alphabet subsidiary […]
Waymo’s self-driving system has driven 10 billion virtual miles
[ad_1] “We’ve driven ten billion miles in simulation,” says CTO Dmitri Dolgov at #TCMobility pic.twitter.com/NHtL90wJLX — Waymo (@Waymo) July 10, 2019 The company runs the equivalent of 25,000 self-driving cars 24 hours a day in the simulation. Every time one of them learns something new from what it experiences, it will share its findings with […]
Waymo will test its self-driving taxis on employees in California
[ad_1] There are some restrictions, of course. Waymo can’t charge for these rides, and every vehicle must have a safety driver behind the wheel. Interestingly, the CPUC will allow Waymo to contract out its safety driver operations to a third party — a decision prompted by Waymo’s assessment that operating and scaling a “meaningful pilot” […]
Waymo hires former Anki staff to lead its self-driving trucks
[ad_1] It sounds like an odd move to jump from tiny bots like Vector to big rigs, but it’s a logical extension for at least some Anki workers. Sofman, for instance, worked alongside Waymo staff in Carnegie Mellon’s autonomous vehicle labs. And many of the team’s core skills can translate. After all, navigation is a […]