Skip to main content

Can A.I. make self-driving cars a reality? Waymo reveals the future

Image used with permission by copyright holder
Sundar Pichai stands in front of a Google logo at Google I/O 2021.
This story is part of our complete Google I/O coverage

Shortly after one of its autonomous minivans was involved in a crash while operating in manual mode, Waymo got a slice of stage time at Google I/O to discuss its self-driving cars, using that time explain the role of artificial intelligence in autonomous driving. In a Medium post elaborating on the points made in the I/O keynote, Waymo Chief Technical Officer Dmitri Dolgov said it uses A.I. to train self-driving cars to identify their surroundings in a manner similar to human drivers.

Waymo started out as Google’s internal self-driving car project before being spun off into a separate unit. There was a significant amount of cross-pollination between autonomous car engineering and the Google Brain A.I. program during the early stages of both projects, according to Dolgov. Among other things, this allowed error rate for pedestrian detection in self-driving cars to be reduced 100 times in just a few months, Dolgov said.

Recommended Videos

The need for self-driving cars to be able to accurately classify what they see was tragically highlighted by a fatal crash involving an Uber autonomous car in Arizona. On March 18, the car struck pedestrian Elaine Herzberg while she was pushing a bicycle across a street at night. Official investigations into the incident have not concluded, but a recent report points to a flaw in the software the car relied on to make decisions about avoiding obstacles. Uber has declined to comment on that report.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Waymo claims that A.I. is vital helping self-driving cars make the right decisions. In his Medium post, Dolgov said Waymo uses A.I. to train its cars for situations like maneuvering through construction zones, moving over for emergency vehicles, and making room for cars that are parallel parking. This is done by feeding the system examples based on observed real-world situations.

Engineers lean on Google infrastructure, including the tech giant’s network of data centers and Google-developed tensor processing unit chips to test machine learning models. Use of TPUs makes that process 15 times more efficient, according to Waymo. In addition to testing real cars on public roads, Waymo claims to run the equivalent of 25,000 cars a day in computer simulations. Waymo self-driving cars surpassed 5 million miles on public roads in February, and the company claims to have completed 2.7 billion simulated miles last year.

Waymo’s next big move will be to launch a commercial autonomous ridesharing service in Arizona later this year. In preparation for that, the company is bulking up its fleet of vehicles, ordering more Chrysler Pacifica minivans and making plans to add the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace as well.

Stephen Edelstein
Stephen is a freelance automotive journalist covering all things cars. He likes anything with four wheels, from classic cars…
This tech was science fiction 20 years ago. Now it’s reality
Hyundai Wearable Exoskeleton, assistive tech

Twenty years really isn’t all that long. A couple of decades ago, kids were reading Harry Potter books, Pixar movies were all the rage, and Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation were battling it out for video game supremacy. That doesn’t sound all that different from 2021.

But technology has come a long way in that time. Not only is today’s tech far more powerful than it was 20 years ago, but a lot of the gadgets we thought of as science fiction have become part of our lives. Heck, in some cases, this technology has become so ubiquitous that we don’t even think about it as being cutting-edge tech.

Read more
The future of transportation: Self-driving cars? Try self-driving everything
GM electric flying taxi

Technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives. Once a week in The Future Of, we examine innovations in important fields, from farming to transportation, and what they will mean in the years and decades to come. 

Stroll around any CES (virtual or otherwise) in the last decade and it’s impossible to miss all the feels the tech industry has for transportation, self-driving cars in particular. Every major technology company has its fingers in cars, from the infotainment systems powered by Google and Apple to the operating systems driven by Blackberry and Linux to the components and circuits that make up the car itself, built by Qualcomm and Nvidia and NXP and a dozen more. (And don't get me started about this Apple Car nonsense.)

Read more
From Paris to NYC, Mobileye will bring self-driving cars to metropolises
A self-driving vehicle from Mobileye's autonomous test fleet navigates the streets of Detroit. (Credit: Mobileye, an Intel Company)

A Tesla in Autopilot mode can ply the highways of Northern California without issue, but when it comes to congested cities packed with erratic vehicle traffic, bikes, and pedestrians, cameras don’t always cut it. Or they didn’t, anyway. After years of testing, Intel-owned Mobileye intends to embrace the madness of the metropolis by rolling out self-driving cars in cities across the world.

On Monday, the first day of CES 2021, the company announced that Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris, Detroit, and New York City will all see fleets of Mobileye-powered vehicles rolled out in early 2021, if all goes well (regulatory issues are still being ironed out in NYC).

Read more