Self-Driving Cars Take Over the Roads in Major U.S. Cities

Ever see those self-driving cars with the “spinny-thingies” on top? Those are self-driving cars in training, and are now in major US cities. Google’s Waymo, a self-driving technology company is launching its 5th fully driverless ride service in Atlanta. Last week, Tesla got into its very first, launching its limited Robotaxi service in Austin, with safety monitors in the car.

Tesla in its marketing-first fashion has released their service to Tesla friendly influencers, in certain areas of Austin. Google’s Waymo cars are fully autonomous in areas of Austin and Atlanta.

The key difference between the two are the technologies they use:

• Tesla uses a series of 8 cameras for their Full Self Driving (Supervised) system, which use image detection
• Waymo uses pre-generated custom maps of its coverage areas, and uses LiDar, Radar, and image sensors - which is why you have that spinny thingy ontop

Tesla’s system is much cheaper, and older version of the software were shown to be fooled by fake backdrops, think Wile E. Coyote roads painted on walls - and even hit a mannequin that was covered with a haze of smoke.

Although reviews of Tesla’s service were generally good, as you’d expect from a bunch of Tesla fans - there was this one clip where the car suddenly veered into the oncoming lane.

https://twitter.com/i/status/193697169427229496

The Society of Automotive Engineers defines 6 levels of driving automation from 0 fully manual, to 5 fully autonomous. Waymo is at level 4, which requires no human engagement, the passenger doesn’t need to be paying attention - you may not even have a pedal or steering wheel - but this level wouldn’t be trusted for a cross country drive - it would be suited for short trips in well known environments.

Tesla is at level 2, which means a human supervisor needs to sit in the vehicle at all times. Given how limited the camera system is, its likely they will continue to sit at level 2 for some time. However these camera-only systems are much cheaper and faster to scale.

In theory self-driving cars sound nice. But with big tech companies at the helm, we know there’s no free rides - and these systems will be used to push a smart city agenda, where humans will be deemed unfit to drive and all car travel will be tracked and controlled through these driverless ride services.

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