Waymo, Alphabet's car-driving AI says it could avoid fatal human crashes

Alphabet Inc, Google's parent company, also owns the autonomous-car artificial intelligence (AI) company Waymo. On Monday, the company, in a white paper said that is technology mostly avoided or mitigated crashes in a set of virtually created fatal accidents.

These crashes, 72 of them, have occurred in real life between 2008 and 2017 in Chandler, Arizona; 20 of these crashes included a pedestrian out a cyclist. Waymo runs ' Driver ' , a small-scale autonomous ride-hailing service, based on its sensors and software, out of this town.

“We believe we have an opportunity to improve road safety by replacing the human driver with the Waymo Driver,” Trent Victor, Waymo’s director of safety research and best practices, said in a blog pos t. “This study helps validate that belief.”

The 'Driver' only couldn't avoid crashes that occurred from behind, according to the study. According to Waymo, it's the first time that an autonomous start-up has shared such an assessment, publically. While the company claims that its target audience is the public, not the regulators, it also said that in October, it hoped to revive conversations around industry safety standards and legislative support for autonomous driving technology. In some good news for the company, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is in concurrence that simulations are a possible approach to enhance self-driving technology.

The virtual simulation tested the technology as both- the initiator of the crash as well as the car that was hit. While celebrations the 'breakthrough', the white paper also points out that the technology's virtual performance doesn't mean that these vehicles will perform similarly, and avoid causing a real accident. The paper also pointed out how human drivers can possibly misinterpret the actions of an autonomous car or react differently with an autonomous car versus a human-driven car in a potential car crash situation.

It is also important to note the 'breakthrough' of avoiding crashes in 52 situations was simply the technology following the rules of the road such as following the traffic signals or the speed limit.

“Transparency is critical to foster trust with the public in light of a few cases where capabilities were exaggerated,” BloombergNEF analyst Alejandro Zamorano-Cadavid said. “These hindsight tests are a good piece for evaluating the Waymo Driver, and it will be good to see other companies publish results on how their systems performed in the same situations.”

Credits : https://indiaai.gov.in