Driver-less Cars, Waymo

Waymo into Self Driving trucks

Waymo has been considered as the Godfather of Self Driving cars. Since 2009, Waymo is being developed in the Google labs with software and sensors and is here to make a big change in the transportation industry. Already in the progress for launching their driver-less cars, Waymo has now marked their footprints in driver-less trucks.

First images of Waymo’s driver-less truck is out by Jalopnik. They have trucks equipped with radars, lidar and ultrasonic radars. According to Waymo they want to explore new context of driver-less trucks. Owing to the large percentage of accidents that happen yearly due to truck mishaps, Waymo wants that transportation of people and things from one spot to another is done rather carefully and securely.

waymo driverless truck

According to reports, the number of truck drivers has been constantly declining. By the year 2024 it can get decrease to a mere number of 1,75,000 drivers! Waymo has even clearly mentioned that automated trucks are not here to replace truck drivers but only to optimize the way they are used. They plan to handle the monotonous long routes by the automated technology in the driver-less trucks and use human expertise on surface streets where a single mistake can lead to haphazard results.

Waymo has been tackling out their detailing on one of the private trucks in California lately. Major questions like where to manage the sensors on 53-foot trailers, or how to apply brakes and accelerators to limit the speed in a truck, all such scenarios have been answered and tested out by them. The process has been long initiated and Waymo is therefore planning to role out trial ride on the roads of Arizona later this year. Waymo has always been in the business for carrying out fully automated driver-less cars. But with automated trucks that is not the case. The size of truck determines that it is not possible without human intervention to drive through narrow streets, initially. This will be a good challenge for Waymo to develop something like this.

This is taking a huge turn but Uber and Tesla are all ready to take their foot out which actually compelled Waymo to take this step!

It will be interesting to see where does Waymo land with its driver-less trucks!

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