These detailed maps know where the stop signs are, the traffic signals, construction zones, etc. This group wrote about their project in a paper titled, “Autonomous Vehicle Navigation in Rural Environments without Detailed Prior Maps.” As I mentioned above, the Waymo cars continuously reference detailed maps while they drive, and detailed means detailed. The next data-point comes from the research community, specifically MIT. At least from this perspective, Waymo is about at the driving prowess of a 16-year-old with a freshly-minted license. Why did my wife and I constrain their driving like this? Because that was what we thought was safe. They could only drive on very familiar roads and then only in clear weather. Those were the rules when my kids got their driver’s licenses at 16. The cars will be operating in good weather and on roads with which they have a lot of experience driving. I am sure Waymo is confident their cars will operate safely, but don’t forget they have greatly constrained the environment these cars will operate under. It only gets about 8 inches of rain per year and the last time they had measurable snow at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport was in the 1930’s. I’m sure anyone that has lived in the area can attest that Phoenix has almost perpetual clear driving weather. In addition to these recordings, the company has also created detailed maps the cars reference while they drive.
In preparation for the roll out, Waymo is amassing enormous databases filled with real-world experiences recorded during actual driving experiences on the Phoenix streets. Waymo has also made no secret of its plan to roll out an autonomous ride-hailing business in Phoenix, Arizona in late 2018. It doesn’t get much brighter than that in the research community.Īs is widely known, Waymo originated as a project at Google in 2009 and eventually became its own subsidiary. After that we’ll look at a recent project conducted by the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and presented at the 2018 International Conference on Robotics and Automation. In the self-driving car industry, there is nothing more state of the art than Waymo. To answer this question, at least at a macro level, I look at two examples of self-driving car projects, one in industry and one in academia. What is the state of the art in self-driving cars?