An autonomous robotaxi from Waymo (Google) in San Francisco.

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Waymo

One-way streets, double-parked vehicles, pedestrians, perpetual roadworks, fog… We will finally find out where Google's autonomous car technology really stands.

Waymo, the transport subsidiary of Alphabet (the parent company of Google) announced on Wednesday the arrival in San Francisco of its robotaxis service for tests with passengers.

A much more complex challenge than in Phoenix, where Waymo has been present since 2017 and offers a limited sales service.

Google's robotaxis will initially only be used by Waymo employees, volunteers to collect data that will be used to improve the technology.

In Phoenix, commercial service without a driver - neither in vehicles nor remotely - is available to a limited number of customers.

The American city, located on a plain, well grid, not very pedestrianized and very sunny, lends itself well to the exercise.

In San Francisco, Waymo will have to face "the hills which follow one another and the large sandy roads along the ocean, the narrow streets and the freeways, the cycle paths and the rails of the trams", notes the subsidiary in its communicated.

“Building an autonomous driving service that can face this complexity safely and efficiently is a huge engineering challenge,” adds the company.

Duel with Tesla

Waymo claims to have already started to adapt its sensors and software to a denser and more volatile urban environment, to even detect pedestrians who cross the road outside the nails, emerging from behind a vehicle, for example.

The city and its region are not entirely new to the system.

“Waymo's story began in the San Francisco Bay Area,” recalls the subsidiary.

The brand's cars completed their first “1,000 autonomous miles” in California, including in the tech capital and in Silicon Valley, where Google's headquarters are located.

Waymo has gained a head start over other companies in the race for autonomous technology, like Tesla and Uber.

An Uber self-driving car was involved in a fatal crash in March 2018, forcing most groups engaged in the technology to reassess their safety systems.

This summer Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla, for his part declared “extremely confident that we would very quickly have the basic functionalities of level 5 autonomous driving, which is basically full autonomy (…) this year ".

But he had already promised the autonomous car for 2018, then assured that he would circulate robotaxis in early 2020.

  • Autonomous car

  • High Tech

  • Google