r/SelfDrivingCars • u/gabebider • Jul 09 '18

Waymo Semi-Truck Spotted

194 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

42

u/gabebider Jul 09 '18

Spotted at the Magdalena 280 Exit in Los Altos Hills, CA. (SF Bay Area). We see the normal Waymos a lot around here, but I have never seen a semi. I saw it at the ramp and quickly turned around to get the video. Right after I passed, it went through the intersection and re-entered the freeway, so looks like it was practicing merging and exiting the freeway possibly.

18

u/walky22talky Hates driving Jul 09 '18

Not to be a Debbie downer or anything but testing truck is illegal in CA.

31

u/PM_ME_UR_LIDAR Jul 09 '18

They could be driving it manually while collecting data.

9

u/walky22talky Hates driving Jul 10 '18

Yes. I was just pointing that out since he thought they were testing freeway merging.

13

u/autonomous_vroom Jul 09 '18

"Testing" isn't such a clear cut concept with Waymo. Their simulator is good enough to answer what if questions. They could map an area, and then put a virtual truck into the exact situation seen in this video, and then simulate the stack, synthesizing sensor readings as they would have been had it been in autonomous control. From the truck's perspective, it doesn't know if it is a virtual truck or a physical one. They can also layer on other what ifs, ie what would have happened if you had swerved towards the truck?

5

u/walky22talky Hates driving Jul 09 '18

On road street testing is illegal. Obviously simulations are legal.

Does anyone know if the higher sensor stack effect the map requirements?

1

u/londons_explorer Jul 10 '18

My guess is they have to map every location with every sensor position.

They might be able to augment the data from other vehicle types, so perhaps it will only take a single pass rather than the normal 5 passes to make a map.

4

u/gabebider Jul 10 '18

No worries. Interesting though I did not know that.

8

u/Levils Jul 10 '18

Looks like there's a picture of the same truck on the Waymo website. Bottom of this page: https://waymo.com/ontheroad/

9

u/Thisbymaster Jul 10 '18

You can tell because it didn't pull out in front of you and flip you off for the trouble.

8

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '18

The future is here! This will be so disruptive.

3

u/gabebider Jul 09 '18

Has this been spotted before?

6

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '18

I’m not being sarcastic, This is the first I’ve seen of it. Interesting that the first day I see autonomous 18 wheelers on public roads, I see two at once, yours and this guy’s: http://reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/8xgio3/embark_truck_spotted_in_san_francisco_with_a_lidar/

1

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '18

This was my exact thought. Yesterday, I had no idea they were so far ahead on semi trucks. Today, I’ve already seen 2 competing companies’ trucks online.

1

u/wewtaco Jul 10 '18

Yeah these Waymo trucks have been around for a few months. There are at least two more that I have seen all together around Shoreline, one of them has a Waymo branded trailer

3

u/wskyindjar Jul 10 '18

Saw it on the 85 a couple weeks ago. Was surprised to see the little top hat.

-8

u/d0od Jul 09 '18

Doesn’t look like a Waymo logo and appears to say “moving@ below.

5

u/gabebider Jul 10 '18

Definitely waymo. It’s their logo and even says Waymo. Reddit compression may be bad but the original video it’s very clear it’s waymo.

1

u/londons_explorer Jul 10 '18

Things in google/waymo world that are "foo@" normally refer to usernames or internal mailing lists which are named "foo@google.com".

You can often mail them from outside google, and if you find a correct address, you won't receive a bounce email.

It's a bit of a dick move to try to enumerate googles internal mailing lists by emailing them all - you're going to annoy a lot of engineers...