Bad weather can have an impact on an autonomous driving system. To improve its technology, Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet Group, decided to make Waymo Driver a mobile weather station. In a blog post on Nov. 14, the company announced that it has designed a new “quantitative weather visibility metric” that Waymo Driver can use to generate estimates of current weather and environmental conditions in Phoenix and San Francisco, the cities where its robot cabs operate.

Autonomous driving systems can run into trouble in bad weather: reflections from wet roads can interfere with cameras; condensation, fog, haze and rain can clog sensor surfaces and alter their data. To overcome this last problem, Waymo engineers have built a cleaning system.

The fifth-generation Waymo Driver, which is composed of cameras, radar and lidar, uses raindrops on the car’s windows, or the lack thereof, to classify various weather conditions. Waymo has added weather visibility sensors, horn-shaped devices placed on the roof of the car that collect ground truth data on fog, droplet density…

Realistic weather simulations, from the sensor level to the system level, allow it to improve Waymo Driver’s performance in challenging weather conditions. By combining the two data sources, the company was able to generate a quantitative weather visibility metric, which allows it to create a real-time fog map for San Francisco and Phoenix where its robot cabs operate.

Waymo and San Francisco

Weather conditions change very quickly in San Francisco, even differing from neighborhood to neighborhood. Data from weather stations, satellites and radars often lack the accuracy and specificity to reflect the actual driving conditions of our vehicles.

Advancing Waymo Driver in this city is especially important for Waymo because on November 18, the company received approval from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to participate in its Driverless Pilot program, hosting passengers in a test autonomous vehicle that operates without a driver in the vehicle. The company has joined Cruise, which, like the company, is not allowed to operate its vehicles in fog or heavy rain.

Waymo’s goal is to advance Waymo Driver with a detailed understanding of the weather and its impact on the technology for greater safety, but also to change the law before operating it in other cities, where it plans to create similar weather maps.

Translated from Waymo transforme ses robotaxis en stations météorologiques mobiles