Recomendations

Introduction and Project Mythology

Kedrian Ramos

Southern New Hampshire University

Professor Piccirillo

Autonomous driving technology

Waymo is an American company which has specialized on autonomous driving technology. The company is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc, the parent company of Google. The mission of the company is to make it easy for both people and goods to get to their destination safe. Waymo has focused on building autonomous car to improve access to mobility while saving people lives now lost to road accidents. Waymo LLC aims at automating the driving system to reduce human control in the car. Autonomous technology is will make cars move with human driver, this is different from the current technologies used in cars such as lane-keeping systems or the adaptive cruise-control which require operation and control by the driver. The autonomous driving technology handle the whole driving activities under certain conditions. The company is methodically rolling out its autonomous vehicle technology in the form of robo-taxi service. Waymo has logged over 20 million miles of autonomous driving without any reported death.

Waymo is operating in Sunny Phoenix and it is planning to launch its business in other cities such as San Francisco where weather and hills complicate the operation (Waymo LLC, 2021). The other challenge is the requirement of a legal and policy structure. There are some cases on road in which autonomous system is unlikely to decide whether to save the passengers or other motorists. Making sensible decisions under such conditions is challenging. Third, there is challenge about who is to be held accountable in case of accident of damage (Koopman & Wagner, 2019). Despite these challenges, the autonomous vehicle technology is advancing and Waymo Company is also planning to license its automated driver technology to other car manufacturers.

Problem statement

The company is committed to developing autonomous vehicles because of they are thought to be safer and better for all road users. Around the world, more than 1.5 million people die because of road accidents each year. In the United States, traffic accident kill more than 35,000 people each year. Still in the US, about 94% of the crashes are caused by human choice or error, and this in one place where autonomous vehicles can bring technology to bear (Singh & Saini, 2020). Moreover, truck crashes cause about 5,000 deaths and more than 110,000 people are injured in track-related accidents each year in the US. Autonomous driven cars could help people who cannot drive such as the blind, elderly and the disabled to get around places. With the autonomous technology, Waymo believes highways will be safer by integrating the technology to operate vehicles.

References

Koopman, P., & Wagner, M. (2019). Challenges in autonomous vehicle testing and validation SAE. International Journal of Transport and Safety, 4, 15-24.

Singh, S., & Saini, B. S. (2020). Autonomous cars: Recent developments, challenges, and possible solutions. IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 1-10. doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1022/1/012028

Waymo LLC. (2021). Waymo autonomous vehicles. Retrieved from https://waymo.com/faq/