Waymo Self-driving Cars Are Having Problems Turning Around Corners (siliconangle.com)

Alphabet's Waymo has long been regarded as the leader in autonomous vehicle development and technology, but all might not be as well as it seems at the company, according to a report published Tuesday. From a report: The Information quoted a number of unnamed Waymo insiders who claim the vehicles being used in the Arizona ride-hailing test have numerous problems. The test, which launched in November, is meant to be converted to a full commercial service later this year. The report claimed that the autonomous Chrysler Pacifica struggles to handle a number of driving tasks and even goes as far as annoying human drivers around them. Top among the problems is an apparent issue with turning left. "The Waymo vans have trouble with many unprotected left turns and with merging into heavy traffic in the Phoenix area, especially on highways," the report noted. "Sometimes, the vans don't understand basic road features, such as metered red and green lights that regulate the pace of cars merging onto freeways." If having problems turning left isn't bad enough, they also apparently on occasion have problems turning right. One woman claimed that she almost hit a Waymo vehicle as it suddenly stopped while trying to make a right turn.

Comments

Re:Autonomous Dreams

[JaredOfEuropa]

I've seen those demos 20 years ago, it was pretty much lane keeping on highways or race tracks, adaptive cruise control as you say, and at the time there were some other demos showing self-parking cars, but none of it could even be called a prototype, they were proof-of-concepts unfit for public roads. Today, that technology can be had even on mid-range vehicles. Shrinking the hardware to the point where it can be offered in production vehicles is progress in itself.

The self-driving cars making the rounds today are way more capable than all that, and are already demonstrating dealing with the "real issues" such as recognizing street signs, traffic lights, other traffic and pedestrians, and using all that to navigate through city traffic. That's in no way comparable to those tech demos of 20 years ago, even though it's not ready for unsupervised driving just yet.