Obviously there is a huge amount of money and effort being spent on automated driving. But I cannot help thinking that this perception technology will prove very useful for robotics in general, factory, home, in space, etc. Car dynamics are fast enough to be useful across a huge number of domains.

In some sense, the visionaries in this space are not thinking big enough. I want visions of mobility with a totally different size, look, speed, etc. autonomous Golf carts? tuktuks? A moving autonomous bicycle carrier? etc

Like imagine a low speed, electric, autonomous, golf-cart-only lane at every train station, for the last mile.

The lead that Waymo has acquired in perceiving its driverless car's environment will be almost impossible to kill. In about 5 years, it'll be like NVidia and CUDA. Tesla's choice to abandon lidar will be one of the biggest oof in business history.

I'm forever baffled that GM gave up on Cruise just as soon as Waymo was proving that autonomous driving is feasible.

(Disclaimer: former Cruise employee)

"the Waymo Driver has long utilized several external audio receivers, or EARs"

Nice abbreviation.

The ambiguity in the title is going to get a lot of the "skeptics" who have remained in denial about this to assume it's some kind of admission that they haven't been autonomous this whole time.

It's weird how many people there are like that still.

But what they mean is that they are putting the new release into production (without backup drivers). They have been fully autonomous for many years.

This is a lie:

>> The 6th-generation Waymo Driver is the product of seven years of safety-proven service amassed from driving nearly 200 million fully autonomous miles across the densest cores of 10+ major cities and an expanding network of freeways. Our experience as the only company operating a fully autonomous service at this scale has reinforced a fundamental truth: demonstrably safe AI requires equally resilient inputs. This deep understanding of real-world requirements is why the Waymo Driver utilizes a custom, multi-modal sensing suite where high-resolution cameras, advanced imaging radar, and lidar work as a unified system. Using these diverse inputs, the Waymo Driver can confidently navigate the "long tail" of one-in-a-million events we regularly encounter when driving millions of miles a week, leaving nothing to the imagination of a single lens.

Waymo uses remote safety drivers that they call "fleet response agents", probably to deflect from the fact that they are, indeed, remote safety drivers.

Much like phone-a-friend, when the Waymo vehicle encounters a particular situation on the road, the autonomous driver can reach out to a human fleet response agent for additional information to contextualize its environment. The Waymo Driver does not rely solely on the inputs it receives from the fleet response agent and it is in control of the vehicle at all times. As the Waymo Driver waits for input from fleet response, and even after receiving it, the Waymo Driver continues using available information to inform its decisions. This is important because, given the dynamic conditions on the road, the environment around the car can change, which either remedies the situation or influences how the Waymo Driver should proceed. In fact, the vast majority of such situations are resolved, without assistance, by the Waymo Driver.

In the most ambiguous situations, the Waymo Driver takes the lead, initiating requests through fleet response to optimize the driving path. Fleet response can influence the Waymo Driver's path, whether indirectly through indicating lane closures, explicitly requesting the AV use a particular lane, or, in the most complex scenarios, explicitly proposing a path for the vehicle to consider. The Waymo Driver evaluates the input from fleet response and independently remains in control of driving. This collaboration enhances the rider experience by efficiently guiding them to their destinations.

From: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/

Note the language: the Waymo Driver "remains in control of driving" but a Fleet Response Agent "proposes" the path.

In other words, Waymo is not "operating a fully autonomous service", nor does it seem anything has changed now, with the "sixt-generation fully autonomous Waymo Driver". It still needs human brains to take it by the hand and help it when it gets stuck in ambiguous situations that arise despite the claim that it "can confidently navigate the "long tail" of one-in-a-million events we regularly encounter when driving millions of miles a week".

Is the TL;DR of the article that they're launching this (https://waymo.com/blog/2021/12/expanding-our-waymo-one-fleet...) new vehicle design?

I read the whole thing, but, idk, surprised they didn't include a picture or clarify if this is strictly hardware, or hardware + software changes (with the software changes maybe back propagating to existing Drivers)

I find the title delightfully vague and open to interpretation. Does the title imply that prior to the sixth generation, the fifth generation and earlier generations cannot have fully autonomous operations? Or does the title merely suggest that an earlier version of sixth generation was not ready for fully autonomous operations but now is?

"leaving nothing to the imagination of a single lens."

Nice dig at Tesla.

Is this one going to stop parking on the side of city streets with the hazards on the middle of rush hour?

For all the impressive technological advances Waymo makes (and don’t get me wrong, they are impressive), their cars are still a constant obnoxious menace to drivers.

Elon in shambles

> Our experience as the only company operating a fully autonomous service at this scale has reinforced a fundamental truth: demonstrably safe AI requires equally resilient inputs. This deep understanding of real-world requirements is why the Waymo Driver utilizes a custom, multi-modal sensing suite where high-resolution cameras, advanced imaging radar, and lidar work as a unified system. Using these diverse inputs, the Waymo Driver can confidently navigate the "long tail" of one-in-a-million events we regularly encounter when driving millions of miles a week, leaving nothing to the imagination of a single lens.

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I actually hope that they do not succeed in the end. Ubiquitous self driving cars will spell the end of what's left of walkable areas in North America and bring about (in time) similar destruction of the urban fabric to Europe and elsewhere. I'm not very articulate and English is my second language but this video below is really worth watching before we all swallow as an axiom the idea that autonomous cars are going to be a good thing:

https://youtu.be/040ejWnFkj0?si=-iffWU43sxwviD5t

[EDIT] Most of you seem unwilling to spend an hour to watch a youtube video (although I believe it's worth your time esp if you're from North America) so here's a summary I attempted in another comment:

"Autonomous cars will clog up existing cities by cruisnig around looking to pick up rides or deliver shit and mill around endlessly or occupy every piece of parking in prime real estate to make sure they are quickly available wherever demand is high (i.e. where people want to or have to be). In time they will phase out human driven cars which will lead to higher speed limits and more infrastrcuture that supports autonomous driving. Meaning fewer "difficult" intersections, straighter roads, no bike lanes or pedestrian sidewalks. Everything optimized for autonomous cars to endlessly mill around. People will be blocked from being near autonomous cars as those will be going too fast for human reflexes to cope with so areas where cars drive will not have sidewalkss nor bike lanes. This will lead to urban areas that are even more car dependent with only pockets of urbanism that support human scale. To get anywhere one will need to hail one of those autonomous taxis and then zoom in it to a destination where it's again safe to walk in whatever pocket of human activity. Since cars need a lot more land area than humans the urban infrastructure will mostly cater to them and not to people because the expectation and argument will be that you can always get your ass shuttled to wherever you need to be."