Waymo has received the green light to start its autonomous taxi service without a driver in Los Angeles County. The move has sparked protests from local leaders who have expressed safety concerns in light of many collision incidents involving Google's autonomous vehicles. The date for the first trip has not yet been set, but it has been decided that the company will be allowed to operate fully autonomous vehicles and transport members of the public.
Waymo is Google's technology company that began developing autonomous vehicles back in 2009. In 2015, Google started operating the autonomous vehicle on public roads. Today, the company operates robo-taxi services, a fully autonomous vehicle without a driver, in Phoenix, Arizona, and in San Francisco. As mentioned, the service will soon begin in Los Angeles, as well as in Austin, Texas.
Google has invested substantial amounts in the development of autonomous capabilities and has developed its hardware, which includes sensors and a vision system based on 360-degree surveillance sensors around the vehicle, object detection sensors at a distance of 300 meters from the vehicle, and radars that distinguish other vehicles around and other moving objects. To operate the vehicle, the user has "Start Ride," "Lock," "Stop," and "Help" buttons at their disposal.
The learning function of the car predicts the paths of other vehicles in complex traffic scenarios. The software uses a graphical neural network to identify interactions of Waymo with other vehicles while predicting possible scenarios.
For a year now, Google has been testing its white Jaguar vehicles on the streets of Los Angeles, which have its autonomous driving equipment without a driver. Company spokeswoman Julia Ilina said in a statement: "As always, we will take a cautious approach by continuing to work closely with the authorities, local communities, and our partners to ensure a safe, accessible, and valuable service for our passengers."
The progress of Waymo has met with some skepticism, and autonomous vehicles have sometimes been targets of vandalism. For example, last month a crowd set fire to an empty Waymo car in Chinatown in San Francisco, although the motive for this attack was unclear. Official bodies in Los Angeles have also expressed concern about the future deployment of driverless vehicles, and some supported legislation introduced by state senator Dave Cortese that would give local authorities more power to impose restrictions on autonomous vehicle permits. Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn called the approval of the autonomous car a dangerous decision: "These robotaxis have not been tested much, and Los Angeles should not be the guinea pig for the technology industry."
Peter Finn, president of the Truck Drivers and Delivery Association in the USA, said that the committee's decision comes less than a month after Waymo issued a recall due to a software issue, following two Waymo vehicles hitting the same truck within a few minutes of each other while the vehicle was being towed. "The fact that this permit was issued after such a fiasco raises many questions about the adequacy of the tests that were conducted," he said.