The day before yesterday, Google-based company Waymo won the first batch of $ 2.25 billion in external investments Today, Waymo announced the new generation of autonomous driving systems .
This is the fifth-generation system of this self-driving car company. Waymo claims that it “sees” farther, more accurately, and has lower production costs than the previous four generations.
The sensor package of the new system is mainly composed of three key components: camera, radar, and lidar. They have all been upgraded.
The most advanced part is radar.
Lidar can be said to be a key part of self-driving cars. Waymo claims that this version also has the most advanced technology in all automotive systems today. It is an imaging radar system tailored for autonomous driving. High resolution, range, and field of view.
The “360 Lidar” on the roof can birdLooking at the vehicle and the surrounding objects, the four lidars on the side of the vehicle can detect the surrounding objects.
The sensor can capture 3D images up to 300 meters away, and the most expensive model of the current top lidar manufacturer Velodyne is only 200 meters.
Other radars on the body can also “real-time observe and measure the speed of objects”.
Waymo’s new system can track their speeds without stopping and maintaining a constant speed, thanks to the higher resolution and enhanced processing capabilities brought by the new system.
In addition, the system now includes 29 cameras integrated around the body of the vehicle to cope with complex situations.
There is a front-facing remote camera on the roof with a 360 vision system that can see 500 meters away, so when you sit in Waymo’s car, you can see stop signs, pedestrians and obstacles 500 meters away. Thing.
The overlapped fields of view provided by the other cameras, combined with lidar, look around the object, can more accurately detect the nearby obstacles, and reduce the blind spots near the car.
In general, this unmanned vehicle will provide a continuous clear view of the entire environment.
This allows vehicles to grasp what is happening around them as early as possible under different weather, terrain, and temporary conditions, maximizing the safety of unmanned vehicles.
Waymo’s updated system will be launched as part of the upcoming Jaguar I-Pace electric SUV fleet, which is expected to hit the road by the end of this year.
Waymo’s hardware Leader Satish Jeyachandran said :
The fifth-generation autonomous driving system is the result of more than a decade of work by Waymo. We have driven 20 million miles on public roads, simulated more than 10 billion miles, and plan to deploy in the future on a large scale.
It is worth mentioning that the new system also makes production costs lower than the previous generation, which will allow Waymo to bring more autonomous vehicles to the road faster.
However, Waymo’s autonomous driving technology is just beginning to be commercialized.
Last fall, Waymo began selling fully self-driving taxis to riders in Chandler, Arizona. This week, Waymo Announces Operation A delivery service called Waymo Via.
Required for large-scale deploymentParts are not an easy task, not to mention that Waymo has paid a huge cost over the past decade.
Everything has to wait until more self-driving cars are on the road.
The picture in this article comes from: Waymo