After an incident in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday, Waymo, the ride-hailing startup that provides driverless robotaxis, described what occurs when someone tries to steal one of the completely autonomous, electric Jaguars.
The Los Angeles Police Department reports that when officers got at the incident near South Hill Street and Fifth Street at 12:30 a.m., a man who officials believe may have been intoxicated was behind the wheel of one of Waymo’s completely electric Jaguar I-PACEs. Officers are seen on camera removing him from the driver’s seat, which is typically empty in self-driving cars.
In November, Waymo made its formal debut in Los Angeles, making it accessible to everyone in certain sections of the wider Los Angeles metro area, such as Santa Monica, Hollywood, and the South LA neighborhoods surrounding the University of Southern California campus. Only a select few passengers on a waiting list had access to the app prior to that.
Similar to applications like Uber and Lyft, trips are available via the app twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, but without a driver. At the moment, the service is accessible in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and a few nearby Arizona cities.
Waymo told CBS News Los Angeles in a statement Thursday that there had been “only been a handful of instances” of a rider or someone else not authorized to operate the car attempting to drive away out of the company’s more than 5 million rides.
“Waymo vehicles are designed so that unauthorized individuals cannot disengage the automated driving system and manually operate the vehicles,” Waymo stated in its press release. “Waymo’s Rider Support staff has the authority to request that anyone who is not allowed to be in the driver’s seat get out of the car and terminate the ride. Rider Support works with our Emergency Response Team, which collaborates with law police to respond if they refuse to follow instructions to exit the vehicle.
The cars are completely driverless, and only a few times are Waymo workers behind the wheel. Riders are not permitted to operate the vehicles. According to the corporation, these people are experts evaluating the technology and vehicle performance.
“Our vehicles are primarily driving autonomously, but you’ll sometimes notice that our cars have autonomous specialists riding in the driver’s seat,” according to the business’s website. “These specialists are there to monitor our autonomous driving technology and share important feedback to help us improve the Waymo One experience.”
According to the business, Waymo is completely accessible on surface streets and is in the process of testing to offer trips on freeways.
The business refers to the technology that powers the electric robotaxis as “the Waymo driver,” which consists of both software and hardware for self-driving capabilities. According to the company website, this covers both the software-side data collecting from sensors and the hardware-side sensors, cameras, radars, and an AI platform.
“Together, our hardware and software work in concert to paint a complete picture of the world around the car and enable us to navigate roads safely,” according to the website.
According to a report published this week by the San Francisco Chronicle, Waymo uses cameras in its cars to identify possible instances in which a rider may become impaired due to alcohol consumption.
According to the Chronicle, the cameras in the cars can also detect whether a passenger is smoking or not wearing a seatbelt since they employ a machine-learning algorithm based on real-time situations.
A guy was detained earlier this year on suspicion of attempting to steal one of the autonomous cars in downtown Los Angeles when Waymo was only accessible to riders in the city on a limited waiting list. According to LAPD, he attempted to put the automobile in drive but was unable to successfully use the controls to drive away.
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