If you are someone who thinks that AI and autonomous vehicles are a far-fetched dream, then you need to check out Waymo’s robotaxis. Waymo has long researched Google’s Deep Mind to take a strategic advantage with its rival when it comes to the autonomous vehicle space. Now, this Alphabet-based model is taking another step in revolutionizing the importance of technology, that is, with the robotaxis. What are Waymo’s robotaxis? Read on till the end.
What are Waymo’s Robotaxis?
Folks, before we tell you a brief account about Waymo’s robotaxis, let me tell you what exactly it is. The Waymo’s robotaxis are built by Waymos. It is an Alphabet-based company that has developed these robotaxis with the help of Google’s multimodal large language model (MLLM) Gemini
In the research paper titled “End-to-End Multimodal Model for Autonomous Driving,” Waymo has named the autonomous vehicle as EMMA. You will find on the research paper that this new end to end training model will be processing sensor data for generating future trajectories for autonomous vehicles. This helps the Waymo’s driverless vehicles for making decision about where they can go and how they can avoid obstacles.
Pretty fascinating, isn’t it?
What’s New?
Well, with Waymo’s robotaxis coming into operation, it has become the first in its space that has integrated the MLLM model that effortlessly fuses with technology to serve mobility. Not just that, it has also become a sign that these LLMs will be breaking free of their current use as chatbots, email organizers, and image generators to find applications in an entirely new environment on the road. If you are keen on reading the newspaper, you will find that Waymos is also proposing to develop an autonomous driving system that will be feature MLLM as a first-class citizen
How does EMMA come into the Picture?
With the Waymos developing their robotaxis, EMMA has been designed to be a tool which will be navigating through the complex environments. The company has also identified different situations where the model has helped driverless cars to find the right route along with encountering various animals or construction in the road. Not only Waymos, but car giants like TESLA has also expressed their wish in developing autonomous cars.
Elon Musk has said that the latest version of its Full Self-Driving system (12.5.5) will be using “end-to-end neural nets,” which the AI system will be using to translate the camera images into driving images.
What’s in the Future?
With Waymo’s robotaxis coming into the picture, it is a direct indication that Waymos will be taking the lead on TESLA in building real driverless cars on the roads. Not only that, it is also interested in pursuing an end-to-end system. The company has said that the EMMA model will be excelling at trajectory prediction, object detection as well as road graph understanding.
This development has opened an avenue for possible future research. Here, the core autonomous driving tasks could be combined in a similar, scaled-up setup- this was reported by one of the company blogs.
What are The Limitations that EMMA Comes With?
If you are wondering that with the development of the Waymos taxis, there is a heightened scalability with EMMA. Then, you might be mistaken there. EMMA has got its own limitations. Even Waymos acknowledges that and understands that there will be a need for future research on this ground before Waymos robotaxis is officially up on the roads.
One of the limitations of EMMA is that it is only capable of processing a small number of image frames at a time. There are also some of the other risks that are not clearly mentioned in the research paper. However, if you have used chatbots like Gemini, you will know that these AI models often hallucinate. They can also fail at simple tasks like reading clocks or counting objects. However, with Waymos robotaxis, there is little room for error, especially when the robotaxis are traveling at 40mph down a busy road.
However, more research is required before Waymos robotaxis can be up and about on the roads on a larger scale.
How Are Autonomous Vehicles Becoming A Reality?
Autonomous is slowly becoming a reality. With a handful of cities such as New York and Chicago, as the ridership demand is higher, there could be a mimic of Waymo’s rollout in San Francisco. However, autonomous vehicles are becoming popular, and with more operations, they will become part of large-scale useability in mobility options.
Conclusion
The Waymos robotaxis are said to redefine the future of transportation. With the development of this model, these robotaxis can scale and become much more popular in the future. That’s all, folks. I hope the article will help you to get all the information you need.
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