On Monday, Waymo unveiled the 6th generation of its self-driving technologythat is designed to provide more resolution, range and processing power to its autonomous vehicles. Smarter sensors also mean the cars can better navigate in extreme weather, such as heat, fog, rain and hail, the company said. The updated technology is still being tested and will be available to drivers soon.
The self-driving arm of Google’s parent company Alphabet is expanding its service in areas including San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix. Passengers can ride in the Waymo One appas they would with another ride-hailing service like Uber or Lyft. The service is specifically available to all public passengers in parts of the San Francisco Peninsula and metro Phoenix, and to select members of the public in Los Angeles. Waymo currently operates testing in Austinwith the aim of opening it to riders later this year.
Currently, the company says the 5th-generation Waymo Driver is completing more than 50,000 paid rides per week in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix, using the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace. Waymo is also testing autonomous rides on freeways in the Phoenix area, as seen in an exclusive video shared with CNET in May. The 6th-generation Waymo Driver arrives aboard a (also all-electric) Zeekr vehicle, which features a flat floor, increased head and legroom, reclining seats, and a removable steering wheel and pedals.
See also: Waymo expands self-driving taxi service around San Francisco and Los Angeles
Despite their potential convenience, the reception to these autonomous vehicles hasn’t always been warm. Earlier this year, several of Waymo’s cars were involved in a series of high-profile crashes, including one with a motorcyclist in San Francisco and another involving a towed pickup truck in Phoenix. (Waymo recalled and its software updated (To address the problem, the company said.) In response, the company said its autonomous Waymo Driver was “up to 3.5 times better at preventing crashes resulting in injuries and 2 times better at preventing police-reported crashes than human drivers in San Francisco and Phoenix.”
In a blog post about the 6th-generation Waymo Driver, vice president of engineering Satish Jeyachandran doubled down on the focus on safety issues, noting, “With 13 cameras, 4 lidar, 6 radar and an array of external audio receivers (EARs), our new sensor suite is optimized for improved performance at significantly lower cost, without sacrificing safety. It gives the Waymo Driver overlapping fields of view, all around the vehicle, up to 500 meters away, day and night and in various weather conditions.”
Waymo says it is subjecting its Driver to a “rigorous regimen of structured testing, real-world driving, and simulation” before making the technology available to the general public. Because of the data already collected from previous generations of the Waymo Driver, the company notes that fewer test miles will be required to train and validate this latest iteration, meaning it could hit public roads sooner than ever before.
“With safety as a guiding principle, our system’s performance in simulations shows promising indications that we are on track to operate without a human behind the wheel in about half the time,” Jeyachandran said in his blog post.
The 6th-generation Waymo Driver is already being tested on public roads, and the company says it will share updates on its social platforms throughout the process.
