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November 3, 2019 07:34 am

Waymo's Completely Driverless Cars Are Now Picking Up Passengers

"Congrats! This car is all yours, with no one up front," announces the cheery pop-up notification from Waymo's app. "This ride will be different. With no one else in the car, Waymo will do all the driving. Enjoy this free ride on us!" TechCrunch got one of the first completely-driverless rides as a journalist, writes long-time Slashdot reader galgon. "It appears per Waymo's annoucement earlier this month that driverless rides really are ramping up in the Chandler, AZ area." From TechCrunch's report:Moments later, an empty Chrysler Pacifica minivan appears and navigates its way to my location near a park in Chandler, the Phoenix suburb where Waymo has been testing its autonomous vehicles since 2016.... Waymo wouldn't share specific numbers on just how many driverless rides it would be giving, only saying that it continues to ramp up its operations. Here's what we do know. There are hundreds of customers in its early rider program, all of whom will have access to this offering. These early riders can't request a fully driverless ride. Instead, they are matched with a driverless car if it's nearby. There are, of course, caveats to this milestone. Waymo is conducting these "completely driverless" rides in a controlled geofenced environment. Early rider program members are people who are selected based on what ZIP code they live in and are required to sign NDAs. And the rides are free, at least for now. Still, as I buckle my seatbelt and take stock of the empty driver's seat, it's hard not to be struck, at least for a fleeting moment, by the achievement... Seeing an empty driver's seat at 45 miles per hour, or a steering wheel spinning in empty space as it navigates suburban traffic, feels inescapably surreal... There were moments where the self-driving system's driving impressed, like the way it caught an unprotected left turn just as the traffic signal turned yellow or how its acceleration matched surrounding traffic. The vehicle seemed to even have mastered the more human-like driving skill of crawling forward at a stop sign to signal its intent. Only a few typical quirks, like moments of overly cautious traffic spacing and overactive path planning, betrayed the fact that a computer was in control. A more typical rider, specifically one who doesn't regularly practice their version of the driving Turing Test, might not have even noticed them... Given how fundamentally autonomous mobility could impact our society and cities, it's reassuring to know that one of the technology's leading developers is taking the time to understand and adapt to them. The article also notes that "developing the technologies and protocols that allow a driverless Waymo to detect and pull over for emergency response vehicles and even allow emergency services to take over control was a complex task that required extensive testing and collaboration with local authorities." The original submission also points out that the first video of a completely driver-less Waymo car has now surfaced on YouTube. "Waymo has produced several videos over the years without safety drivers but actual driverless operations have been very minimal and never photographed in the wild." Until now...

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