Silicon Valley is a testbed for a technology that is quickly becoming available across the world. At the push of a button I'm going to hail a robotaxi. Within minutes, a vehicle will be dispatched from a local depot or rerouted from an earlier trip. What will arrive is a car that doesn't have a person behind the steering wheel. So this SUV has been transformed into something quite special. Waymo, which is owned by Google, has kitted it out with about 40 different sensors, cameras, Lidar, radar. All of that's going to help it navigate public roads.
Like the drivers it shares roads with, the AI model that is being used to operate the vehicle needs to make assumptions about the cars and pedestrians around it. When should it proceed at a junction or switch lanes on the freeway? Besides obeying traffic rules, it has to deal with the unexpected, hitting the brakes when, for example, a child jumps out onto the road. These are all decisions you and I would make when we're driving around, but it's quite a different beast when a computer is making those judgments.
The goal is to build the model driver, a system better than people. Robotaxis are reshaping the traditional ride-hailing market, where Uber and Lyft completely revolutionised hailing a cab while robotaxi is changing how people live and work in a city. And now Waymo and other operators are trying to expand their services. Waymo operates in more than 10 cities across the US and has about 3,000 vehicles on the road. It has quickly emerged as the leading robotaxi player and set its sights on several key ride-hailing markets.