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Alphabet's Waymo Will Test Self-Driving Cars In Snowy Detroit (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Alphabet's Waymo, the vehicle arm of Google's parent, announced on Thursday that it will start testing its autonomous Chrysler minivans on roads in the greater Detroit area. Michigan will be the sixth state where Waymo has run its vehicles on public roads. But the region is the first with a winter dominated by snow and ice, the kind of inclement conditions that pose hurdles for vehicle sensors. "Having lived through fourteen Michigan winters, I'm confident that there are few better places that will prepare our self-driving cars for winter conditions," John Krafcik, Waymo's chief executive officer and a former Ford executive, said in a statement. Waymo opened a testing facility in suburban Detroit last year. The hometown automakers are already there. Ford has tested self-driving cars in the state (including some for pizza delivery). General Motors' Cruise Automation is experimenting there as well.
".... "Having lived through fourteen Michigan winters, I'm confident that there are few better places that will prepare our self-driving cars for winter conditions," ..."
Having lived through 50 winters, I beg to differ.
Michigan gets you snow, certainly. The staggering variety of ice, snow, and bitter cold makes driving here truly inhospitable.
- a Minnesotan
-Styopa
...when they're driving through one of "those" neighbourhoods?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I don't know if there's a objective way of determining who has the worst winters.
I never thought too much about Toronto winter weather other than it was bad until we relocated our company headquarters to another part of Ontario where they thought they had the worst weather in the northern hemisphere although it was positively mild when I compared it to what I've put up with in Toronto. They closed down schools with 4" of snow - just about anywhere else I've been (with the exception of Georgia where 0.5" of snow is seen as the coming of the apocalypse), that's nothing to get excited about.
If I was to rate the winters in the various cities in North America I've been in over the years, I would say that Boston has the worst winters (and, yes, I have been in Michigan).
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
The skidding and traction problems have already been solved in the 90's. The problems are de-icing the sensors and how the computer figures out where the road is. Not a trivial problem.
I'll just leave these here:
Item 1.
Item 2.