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More than eight years after it began, Waymo, the company spun out of Google X’s self-driving car project, believes its technology is ready to take to public roads as a fully self-driving car — without anyone in the driver’s seat.
Waymo’s fleet of autonomous vehicles is now prepared to drive on public roads without a safety operator, according to CEO John Krafcik, who announced the development onstage at the Web Summit in Lisbon.
The company also shared some details about the expansion of its pilot program in a blog post. Neither Krafcik nor the company’s reps shared exactly what has given the company the confidence to declare their vehicles “fully” self-driving, but it appears that Waymo has achieved Level 4 autonomy, which means the car can handle every aspect of the driving experience on its own without need for human intervention. Most other companies currently conducting self-driving tests are only at Level 3, a level that still requires a human operator for some (if not most) situations. Read more…
More about Google, Driverless Cars, Autonomous Vehicles, Self Driving Cars, and Waymo
Waymo recently hosted a number of journalists at its private Castle testing compound, and treated us to rides with no safety driver behind the wheel – now, the former Google self-driving car company is going farther still, however, launching public road tests of its autonomous Chrysler Pacifica minivans with no safety driver on board. The tests aren’t limited to one or two… /https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F636578%2F33ad5763-f8f5-45b3-b60b-389fc0db0436.jpg)
Waymo has been very protective of its testing process in past, but recently it started opening up – likely as a bid to help get the public more comfortable with self-driving vehicle technology as it moves towards broad deployment of its autonomous cars. As part of that, the former Google self-driving car project asked a group of journalists to pay a visit to its Castle testing facility… 
Today was a first for me: I drove in a fully autonomous vehicle on roads without anyone behind the wheel. They weren’t public roads, but they did have intersections, other vehicles, pedestrian traffic, cyclists and more, and the car managed a fairly long route without any human intervention – and without any cause for concern on my part. I’ve done a lot of self-driving…