Waymo is fine-tuning its robotaxis after navigating a snowy winter in Philadelphia and other cities.
The company released footage of its vehicles driving through slushy streets in six locations Tuesday to demonstrate the “rigorous, real-world environment” it traversed this season. The Philly section, which begins around 1:10, shows a Waymo vehicle traveling east on a lightly dusted Market Street. While the road was freshly plowed for that test drive, the vehicles encounter tougher conditions in the videos captured in New York City, Denver and Detroit.
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Waymo, which began manual tests in Philadelphia last summer and progressed to autonomous testing with a driver in December, said it was tweaking operations for winter weather after reviewing its latest data. Some of that work involves optimizing charging cycles on electric vehicles to maintain “peak efficiency” through freezing temperatures. The company is also learning “how each city responds to snow,” a Waymo representative said, to account for road maintenance, closures and public transit shifts.
Another area of focus is rider pickup and drop-off points when there are piles of snow on the ground. While Waymo cars can already identify and navigate around snowbanks, the company says, it is working on refining destination points for a better rider experience.
“(When) there isn’t a human driver present, we give riders the autonomy to specify their exact pickup and drop-off points in the app,” Sandy Karp, communications manager for Waymo, said via email. “If they arrive at their destination and find a snowbank in the way, they can tap the ‘pull ahead’ button in the app or reach out to Rider Support for an extra nudge to find a clearer spot.”
Philly isn’t dealing with these scenarios just yet, since the company has not deployed fully self-driving cars in the city. But Waymo is looking to switch to fully autonomous vehicles in the near future with its sixth-generation vehicles. It announced plans to “transition to fully autonomous operations” on Feb. 12, though leaders did not specify its timeline or which cities would receive the new cars first.
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