I wrote about Waymo’s expansion into more of California earlier today. It is bringing its robotaxi service to a lot more of the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, and the Los Angeles metro area. Then, though, as I was scrolling through Waymo’s X/Twitter feed (where the company exclusively posts a lot of news for some odd reason), I noticed a really interesting post. Here it is:
As you can see, with very poor visibility, including the visual obstruction of parked vehicles on the side of the road, a couple of small dogs chase a ball into the street, and a couple of kids are chasing the dogs. The Waymo robotaxi spots the first dog running into the road and brakes suddenly in order to not run it over. Of course, one would expect or hope for this from a self-driving vehicle, but watching the video, it’s definitely impressive nonetheless. I could certainly imagine a human driver — or another self-driving vehicle — not spotting the small dog in time and responding as the Waymo did. If everyone’s being honest, if it wasn’t a Waymo, there’s a good chance this could have been a tragic incident. Of course, we can’t know for sure, though, since it was indeed a Waymo robotaxi that was driving on that street that day.
Another thing that jumped out at me while I was watching the video clip was just how good Waymo’s visuals are. The silhouettes of the dogs and people are so detailed! It’s really impressive what Waymo has developed and how it even shows what the cars are seeing in such a clear and well designed way.
Dmitri Dolgov, co-CEO of Waymo, also shared this alternative view of the incident:
Impressive. Dolgov must be proud of the safer-than-a-human systems he’s helped to develop and commercialize.
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