After being permitted by regulators, Google’s robotic car company, Waymo is now ready to fully test its self driven cars on the streets of California. On last Tuesday, approval granted by the regulators in California has been announced, allowing Waymo for its autonomous cars without presence of the safety driver in it, with restriction of 65 miles per hour upper speed.
Waymo in not the only one to get such permission, but is one among the dozens of companies, testing self-driven cars on the California’s streets. All of them are struggling hard to prove the regulators that their technology is fully complied to its safety regulations, and now ready to go on road without human presence as back up driver.
California will be another U.S. state, with Waymo’s robotic cars as rides has already been enjoyed by a group of volunteer passengers in Arizona since last year. And by the end of year, Waymo is committed for its open to all ride-hailing service in Phoenix, Arizona by deploying a fleet of fully self driven cars for it. Waymo’s logs shows 10 million miles for its autonomous car on the Arizona roads after it secretly started the project within the Google dated back to a decade.
For refining its service, Waymo autonomous car undergo tests on simulators for over 7 billion miles. A back up driver was the regulatory requirement to be there inside the vehicle for any sort of emergency, till the introduction of new regulation in April 2018, a step forward to acquire the phase of fully self-driven without human presence behind the wheel. But still an engineer from a remote location will monitor these cars and could stop and steer the cars in the uncalled for situations.
In comparison with Arizona, California is more populous and congested which will be another challenge for ambitious Waymo.
Waymo, in California too, will stick to strategy of testing autonomous cars starting with rides to employees, then with volunteer passengers and later on offering of open to all ride-hailing service.
If everything gone well towards the long course of fully autonomous cars then it will pretty good start for Waymo if it succeeded by the year end to commercialize its operations in Arizona with permission for fully self driven vehicles in California.
