A Northeastern professor of electrical and computer engineering, says he’s encouraged to see Waymo start testing in New England.
Boston-area residents can’t jump into one of Waymo’s autonomous ride-hailing vehicles just yet, but the company has a fleet gathering data in the region and that indicates the technology is improving and on the way, says a Northeastern University expert.
“What we are seeing is that as the technology is maturing and performance is getting pretty good in these nice warm areas, companies are starting to send vehicles into more challenging environments to at least start to map out the cities and get a lay of the land,” says Michael Everett, a Northeastern University professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Waymo, the self-driving technology company owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has sent out a small fleet of its vehicles to collect data and map out parts of the city, according to a report from WBUR. The vehicles, which are being driven by human operators, will be in the city until the end of June.
In a statement to WBUR, a representative from Waymo said the company is collecting mapping data for now and not offering rides to customers. This is part of an announcement the company made this year that it would be testing its vehicles in more than 10 new cities in the United States.
In Massachusetts, the vehicles will be driven in “a range of neighborhoods, from Mission Hill and East Boston to Cambridge, Somerville and Southie” as well as Interstate 90 and Interstate 93, according to the statement.
Everett says he’s encouraged to see Waymo start testing in this area since New England is known for its harsh winters. Self-driving vehicles continue to struggle in these types of environments since snow and other weather environments like rain and fog can interfere with their sensors.
“I’m excited about it because that is still one of the open challenges that still needs to be solved,” says Everett. “What happens is when you put some of these sensors in challenging weather conditions in snow, rain and fog, it’s kind of like what happens when you are driving with your eyes, you can’t see as well. … All the same problems are going to impact the sensors and will cause them to start to hallucinate that there might be objects that aren’t really there.”
In the nearly two decades, companies have been working in the space, the technology has greatly improved, Everett says.
By collecting the data, “They can spend the next year or two trying to refine their algorithms and their hardware systems so they might be ready a few years down the road to be able to be deployed more regularly across the U.S,” he adds.
Today, people can use Waymo’s robo taxi service in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin and San Francisco. The company in recent years has also begun the process of expanding its offerings to cities on the East Coast, including Miami and Atlanta.
It’s not a coincidence that these cities are often very sunny and offer the ideal environments for self-driving vehicles, Everett says. But the fact that the company has begun testing its technology in the Northeast could be a positive sign that the technology is improving.
Waymo, which became an official company in 2016 after being spun out of Google’s Self Driving Car Project, is arguably the market leader in autonomous robotaxis, at least in the United States. But other major self-driving American companies have also helped advance the space, though many of them have since gone out of business, including General Motors-backed Cruise and Ford and Volkswagen-backed Argo AI.