Waymo begins mapping New York City to improve autonomous driving technology

On November 4, Waymo began mapping New York City's streets. The company said five of its Chrysler Pacifica minivans will drive around Manhattan, mostly south of Central Park. Their operations will extend across the city to the Financial District, as well as to a small section of New Jersey via the Lincoln Tunnel. 

The vehicles will operate only during daytime and will always be driven manually. Waymo said each car will always carry two people ("autonomous specialists"), one in the driver's seat and one in the passenger seat. Later, the company plans to bring "several" of its zero-emission Jaguar I-PACE cars, also driven manually with onboard autonomous specialists, to drive the same streets. 

Waymo claims that the complex driving conditions in New York will improve the ability of its Waymo Driver autonomous driving system to perceive and predict the actions of other road users. Unfortunately, don't expect a Waymo robotaxi service similar to the one available in Arizona to launch in New York anytime soon. 

"We have no immediate plans to launch a robotaxi service in New York. To date, we have driven in dozens of cities, but have not launched a commercial service in every one of them. We drive in these cities to help us train the Waymo Driver, and we can widely apply this knowledge across our entire fleet," a company representative told The Robot Report. 

Waymo has tested in many other places, including Arizona, Death Valley, Miami, Michigan, San Francisco, Washington State and others. This will be Waymo's first ride in New York City. In the summer, Mobileye became the first company to receive permission to test autonomous vehicles on New York's public roads. Mobileye even released a 40-minute video that purportedly shows an unedited trip around the city.

In September 2020, a post appeared on the Waymo blog detailing the mapping process. The company said that when mapping vehicles encounter a rare or complex situation, they can use that experience to help create a map and also train perception and behavior prediction models. 

"To create a map for a new location, our team starts by manually driving our sensor-equipped vehicles along every street so our custom lidar can draw a three-dimensional image of the new environment. This data is then processed to form a map that provides meaningful context for the Waymo Driver, such as speed limits and the location of lanes and traffic lights. Finally, before the map is passed on to the rest of the fleet, we test and validate it so it is ready for deployment," the company said. 

Just as a human driver who has traveled the same road hundreds of times mainly needs to focus on the parts of the environment that change, such as other vehicles or pedestrians, the Waymo Driver knows the road's permanent features thanks to a detailed map, and then uses its onboard systems to accurately perceive the surrounding world, paying more attention to moving objects. 

Streets can also change, so if a vehicle encounters a blocked road or construction zone that does not appear on the map, the company's robust perception system can recognize it and make adjustments in real time. 

New York's busy avenues, unusual road geometry, complex intersections and changing layouts are not the only advantage. Most autonomous vehicle operations in the US have taken place in sunny, dry climates such as Arizona or California. Scaling the technology to other types of climate remains a serious challenge. Although Waymo's cars will not drive autonomously, the company said New York's weather also offers an opportunity to learn. 

"The heavy rain and dense snowfall we expect will provide a basis for driving in different weather conditions, giving us more opportunities to evaluate how our sensors perform in wet and cold conditions, in addition to expanding our data and simulation testing. Ice and snowfall will allow us to continuously improve the Waymo Driver in the real world, and we will apply this knowledge to our entire fleet," Waymo said. 

Testing in New York is similar to Waymo's testing in Florida, which began in 2019. Waymo said testing in Florida would help it "better understand how rain affects" the sensors used in self-driving cars. The Chrysler Pacifica and Jaguar I-Pace drove on a closed road in Naples for several weeks, then were tested on public roads in Miami. 

Waymo and competitor Cruise recently received permission to offer robotaxi rides to passengers in California. Waymo's permit allows the company to operate its autonomous vehicles in certain parts of San Francisco and San Mateo counties. However, the vehicles must have drivers behind the wheel responsible for human safety. 

Waymo vehicles are approved to drive on public roads with speed limits of up to 105 km/h, and can also operate in rain and light fog. The company began public testing in San Francisco in August 2021, with drivers behind the wheel. Waymo has operated a public fourth-level robotaxi service in parts of Arizona since October 2020.