In the early days of self-driving cars, there was much talk about how they would change the way we live and work. But what about the transportation sector? What about the taxis that will soon be driving us around in our own autonomous vehicles? That’s where Waymo comes in. The company is developing self-driving taxis that can drive themselves, and they’re already starting to make a name for themselves as meteorologists. Waymo’s taxis are equipped with sensors and cameras that allow them to track weather conditions and track traffic patterns. They can also predict when a lane will close, so drivers can plan their route accordingly. This technology is already being used by Waymo in Phoenix, where they’re using it to provide transportation for people who need it but don’t have a car. And it’s not just Phoenix; Waymo is also using its taxi technology to provide transportation for people who use public transportation but don’t have access to a car. This technology is going to be very important in the future, and Waymo has been making sure that it’s ready for prime time.
The Alphabet company announced that the latest version of the sensor array on its autonomous vehicles — using a combination of cameras, radar, and lidar — is able to measure weather conditions the car may face, specifically the intensity of rain drops (or lack thereof), as well as fog. It would turn the vehicles into, as the company puts it, “mobile weather stations.”
This doesn’t mean you’ll be seeing a Waymo car giving out the weather on your local TV station anytime soon, but it will help the robotaxis make real-time decisions in adapting to the weather conditions on the ground. It’s being tested to begin with in Phoenix and San Francisco, two very different climates.
Taking this approach would potentially offset the limitations in solely relying on weather data from airport weather stations, satellite, and radar sources, and provide more local, pragmatic data, in this case what’s happening directly in front of the car. That could be useful if a black cloud is following one of them around like a cartoon.
But since the sensors ostensibly turn the vehicles into amateur meteorologists, Waymo is also able to use the data to create real-time weather maps on conditions like the progression of coastal fogs, as well as light drizzles that a radar might miss.
The technology itself is clearly as much in its infancy as self-driving cars are, and we’re nowhere near the kind of uninhibited autonomous technology that movies like Minority Report and i, Robot led us to believe were right around the corner.
Still, when one gazes at the amount of traffic accidents that occur with human drivers who mistakenly think they know how drive in rain or snow, it seems like any additional help in this area couldn’t hurt.
Source: Waymo
