All posts tagged: Autonomous Vehicles

Zoox starts mapping Dallas and Phoenix for its robotaxis

Zoox starts mapping Dallas and Phoenix for its robotaxis

Published by skeptic

Zoox is now mapping the streets of Dallas, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona, as a precursor to testing its autonomous vehicles in the two Sun Belt cities. The company said on Monday that it had sent a small number of its Toyota Highlander SUVs to each city, where workers will drive them to help Zoox’s autonomous software get the lay of the land. Zoox will afterwards start testing its self-driving system using the SUVs in both cities, before switching to its purpose-built robotaxis. Zoox said the two new markets will help it collect data in areas that are different from the dense metros its vehicles currently operate in. Once the company goes live in Dallas and Phoenix, Zoox will operate in 10 cities in the United States, alongside Atlanta, Austin, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. The company is currently offering free rides in Las Vegas and San Francisco through its early-rider program. Zoox said it has driven more than a million autonomous miles in Las Vegas and …

Self-driving tech startup Wayve raises .2B from Nvidia, Uber, and three automakers

Self-driving tech startup Wayve raises $1.2B from Nvidia, Uber, and three automakers

Published by skeptic

Wayve’s self-driving tech has attracted a diverse set of investors in the company’s latest $1.2 billion funding round, including three automakers, top venture and institutional firms, and returning backers Microsoft, Nvidia, and Uber. The total raise could reach $1.5 billion thanks to another $300 million from Uber contingent on deploying robotaxis, beginning in London. Everyone, it seems, wants a piece of the U.K. startup, which is now valued at $8.6 billion. The funding round illustrates the eagerness among Big Tech, legacy automakers, and the investor community to profit from the burgeoning automated driving industry.  Wayve provides what founder and CEO Alex Kendall calls the “contrarian” option in automated driving — contrarian both in its approach to tech and its business model, he told TechCrunch in an interview Tuesday. “I think the technology chessboard is set around where different companies have invested on the technology strategy, and now the commercial chessboard is being arranged,” Kendall said. “We took a very contrarian view on the technology side. We were the first to build end-to-end deep learning for autonomous …

Waymo Asks the DC Public to Pressure Their City Officials

Waymo Asks the DC Public to Pressure Their City Officials

Published by skeptic

Waymo needs some help, according to an email message the self-driving developer sent to residents of Washington, DC on Thursday. For more than a year, Waymo has been pushing city officials to pass new regulations allowing its robotaxis to operate in the District. So far, self-driving cars can test in the city, with humans behind the wheel, but not operate in driver-free mode. The Alphabet subsidiary—and its lobbyists—have asked local lawmakers, including Mayor Muriel Bower and members of the City Council, to create new rules allowing the tech to go truly driverless on its public roads. The company has previously said it will begin offering driverless rides in DC this year. But Waymo’s efforts to sway officials have stalled, so the company is now asking residents to apply some pressure. “We are nearly ready to provide public Waymo rides to everyone in DC,” says an email sent to those who have signed up for Waymo’s DC service. “However, despite significant support, District leadership has not yet provided the necessary approvals for us to launch.” The …

Waymo is testing driverless robotaxis in Nashville

Waymo is testing driverless robotaxis in Nashville

Published by skeptic

Waymo has pulled the human safety driver from its autonomous test vehicles in Nashville, as the Alphabet-owned company moves closer to launching a robotaxi service in the city. Waymo, which has been testing in Nashville for months, is slated to launch a robotaxi service there this year in partnership with Lyft. Riders will initially hail rides directly through the Waymo app. Once the service expands, Waymo will also make its self-driving vehicles available through the Lyft app. Lyft has said it will handle fleet services, such as vehicle readiness and maintenance, charging infrastructure, and depot operations, through its wholly owned subsidiary Flexdrive. Waymo has accelerated its robotaxi expansion and today operates commercial services in Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Phoenix. It also has driverless test fleets in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando. The company tends to follow the same rollout strategy in every new market, starting with a small fleet of vehicles that are manually driven to map the city. The autonomous vehicles are then tested with a …

Waymo Hits a Rough Patch In Washington, DC

Waymo Hits a Rough Patch In Washington, DC

Published by skeptic

Waymo, the Alphabet subsidiary that develops self-driving vehicle tech, has picked up speed. The company now operates robotaxis in six cities and has announced plans to launch in a dozen others this year. It just raised $16 billion in a new round of funding and says it has served over 20 million rides since the company launched its service in 2020, 14 million of them in 2025 alone. But Waymo’s mostly smooth operations have hit a rough patch in Washington, DC, where the company first began testing in 2024. Despite frequent District sightings of the now-familiar white, electric Jaguars, and despite spending tens of thousands of dollars in payments to at least four outside lobbying firms last year, according to filings, the company’s robotaxis are stuck in regulatory limbo. It has no firm debut date in the city, though DC is still listed on its website as launching in 2026. Waymo declined to comment. The legal logjam is a highly visible test for a company—and industry—that’s hoping to expand quickly across the US and, to …

Waabi raises B and expands into robotaxis with Uber

Waabi raises $1B and expands into robotaxis with Uber

Published by skeptic

Autonomous vehicle startup Waabi has raised $1 billion and struck a partnership with Uber to deploy self-driving cars on the ride-hailing platform — the company’s first expansion beyond autonomous trucking. The funding consists of an oversubscribed $750 million Series C round co-led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners and roughly $250 million in milestone-based capital from Uber to support the deployment of 25,000 or more Waabi Driver-powered robotaxis exclusively on its platform. The companies did not provide a timeline for such a large-scale deployment.   The partnership represents a bet that the startup’s AI technology can succeed where others have struggled – scaling across multiple self-driving verticals with a single technology stack. While competitors like Waymo previously attempted both robotaxis and trucking before shutting down its freight program, Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun says her company’s capital-efficient approach and generalizable AI architecture give it a unique advantage to tackle both markets simultaneously.  “Our incredible core technology really enables, for the first time, a single solution that can do multiple verticals, and they can do …

Simple printed signs can hijack self-driving cars and robots

Simple printed signs can hijack self-driving cars and robots

Published by Jenni Sidey

Automatic, robotic systems that operate in our physical environment, also known as embodied AI systems, are continually learning and adapting to their surroundings through sensor-based observations of their environment. Researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Johns Hopkins University have identified new vulnerabilities with embodied AI by investigating how these systems may misperform and or create unsafe situations due to being misled or intentionally misdirected by their operators via the environment. In a recent study, the researchers discovered that place-based texts, such as those on signs or posters placed in the environment to be read and acted upon by humans, can be misinterpreted by AI as authoritative commands that override the machine’s internal safety protocols. The authors found that in many cases this type of command text was enough to compel the machine to act in ways that were contrary to its original programming and design. Alvaro Cardenas, a computer science and engineering professor at UCSC, and Cihang Xie, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering, led this research. The findings represent …

New Data Shows Robotaxis Competing on Price—and Speed

New Data Shows Robotaxis Competing on Price—and Speed

Published by skeptic

In San Francisco, people wanting to get from point A to point B have a few fairly unique options. There’s Uber and Lyft, both headquartered in the area and also available around the world. Then there’s Waymo, the Alphabet subsidiary, providing driverless rides in just a handful of US cities (coming to more places this year). Then, starting last fall, Bay Area denizens also got access to electric automaker Tesla’s ride-hail service, which operates as a “robotaxi” in Texas but as a more traditional service, with drivers behind the wheel, in California. For months, the new and futuristic “robotaxi” services felt like a novelty. Tourists gawked and climbed in for joy rides, but Waymo tended to be slower and more expensive than the human-driven alternatives. Now new data and analysis from the ride-hail price aggregator company Obi finds that the novel services’ prices and wait times are getting more competitive in the Bay Area. It could be a sign that the tech is moving closer to its promise to provide cheaper and widely-available rides—which might …

US Safety Board Opens Probe Into Waymo Robotaxis Passing Stopped School Buses

US Safety Board Opens Probe Into Waymo Robotaxis Passing Stopped School Buses

Published by Sam Flores

WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (Reuters) – The U.S. ‌National ​Transportation Safety Board said ‌on Friday it is opening an investigation into self-driving ​car company Waymo after its robotaxis illegally passed stopped school buses in ‍Austin, Texas, at least 19 ​times since the start of the school year. The Alphabet unit in ​December recalled ⁠more than 3,000 vehicles to update the software that had caused vehicles to drive past stopped school buses that were loading or unloading students, increasing the risk of a crash. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened ‌a probe in October into Waymo vehicles near school buses. Waymo said ​Friday there ‌were no collisions in ‍the ⁠incidents and said its self-driving system known as the Waymo Driver “safely navigates thousands of school bus encounters weekly across the United States, and the Waymo Driver is continuously improving.” Waymo added it is “confident that our safety performance around school buses is superior to human drivers.” In a November 20 letter posted by NHTSA, ​the Austin Independent School District said five incidents occurred in November after Waymo …

ComfortDelGro self-driving car hits road divider during testing in Punggol; no one hurt

ComfortDelGro self-driving car hits road divider during testing in Punggol; no one hurt

Published by Sam Flores

SINGAPORE: A self-driving vehicle operated by ComfortDelGro (CDG) collided with a road divider while undergoing testing in Punggol on Saturday (Jan 17). Responding to CNA queries on Sunday, the transport operator said the vehicle was undergoing routine mapping and familiarisation at about 3.10pm on Saturday at Edgedale Plains when it “detected a small object on the road and responded accordingly”. “The safety operator on board proceeded to take over the steering of the vehicle manually. Unfortunately, the vehicle collided with the road divider during the manual takeover,” said CDG.  It added that there were no passengers on board, and no one was hurt in the incident. The company also said that its self-driving vehicles will take a safety timeout, while the company reviews the incident in coordination with the relevant authorities. The self-driving car’s front bumper appeared to have sustained damage in a photo circulating on social media.  The incident comes after CDG said last month it expected to begin trials of five five-seater autonomous vehicle (AV) shuttles in early 2026. The Land Transport Authority …