Shimon Whiteson is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a Senior Staff Research Scientist at Waymo UK. His research focuses on deep reinforcement learning and imitation learning, with applications in robotics and video games. He completed his doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin in 2007. He spent eight years as an Assistant and then an Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam before joining Oxford as an Associate Professor in 2015. His spin-out company Latent Logic was acquired by Waymo in 2019.

Waymo, the autonomous ride-hailing company that launched its services in Los Angeles late last year, is recalling more than 1,200 vehicles due to a software defect, the National Highway Traffic Safety Assn. said Wednesday. The recall comes after a series of minor crashes with gates, chains and other obstacles in the road that did not result in any injuries, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company said in a filing with the NHTSA. The recall applies to 1,212 driverless vehicles operating on Waymo's fifth-generation automated driving software. Waymo released a software update to resolve the issue, and that update has already been rolled out in all affected vehicles, the recall notice said. The company operates more than 1,500 vehicles across Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix and Austin.

As robotaxis become a more familiar sight on the streets of Los Angeles, Tesla has taken a step that could bring it closer to building its own fleet of self-driving electric vehicles, the California Public Utilities Commission confirmed last week. In November, Tesla applied for a permit that would allow the electric vehicle manufacturing giant to deploy transportation services with company-owned vehicles and human drivers. The permit would be required for Tesla to advance to autonomous cabs. Chief Executive Elon Musk has long made clear his ambitions for a robotaxi service powered by Tesla vehicles, though his company has been criticized by the U.S. government's highway safety agency for making statements that its vehicles can drive themselves. To be sure, the automaker is still a long way off before it can launch a service.

Even experienced drivers can be forgiven for missing a roundabout exit once or twice, but a disoriented robotaxi in Arizona did it 36 times… in a row. While Waymo taxis are among the most advanced autonomous vehicles on the road today, in a video posted earlier this month on X, a confused AV appears to be quite literally stuck in a loop. Sorry I'm late, my WAYMO did 37 laps in the roundabout pic.twitter.com/GSR4sqChV2 And yet, even with blunders like these, there were more vehicles driving themselves this year than ever before. Once cordoned off to a few test tracks and small patches of land in Mountain View, AVs are now rearing their sensors-flapping heads in more than a dozen US cities. Tens of millions of drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians are learning how to coexist amongst these machines while their shared roads serve as real-world test-beds for full-scale AV deployment.

Late last month, a Tesla owner shared shocking dashcam footage of his Model 3 appearing to collide with and drive through a deer at high speeds. The car, which the driver says was engaged in Tesla's driver-assist Full-Self Driving (FSD) mode, never detected the deer standing in the middle of the road and didn't hit the brakes or maneuver to avoid it. That case came just a few months after a vehicle from Waymo, a leading self-driving company, reportedly ran over and killed a pet dog in a collision the company says was "unavoidable." Neither driverless cars, according to reports detailing the incidents, spotted the animals on the road fast enough to avoid them. Video is cut right before sensitive things appear on screen.

With the introduction of autonomous vehicles on the streets, exemplified by driverless taxis from companies like Cruise and Waymo in San Francisco, the conversation around autonomous cars has evolved from futuristic speculation to a pressing issue in contemporary society Panasewicz and Jorge (2023). Public discourse, shaped by personal experiences with existing automation technologies (e.g., adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping assistance), media coverage, and the automotive industry, has emerged to discuss both the opportunities and challenges of widespread adoption of autonomous

As automated vehicles (AVs) become increasingly popular, the question arises as to how cyclists will interact with such vehicles. This study investigated (1) whether cyclists spontaneously notice if a vehicle is driverless, (2) how well they perform a driver-detection task when explicitly instructed, and (3) how they carry out such tasks. Using a Wizard-of-Oz method, 37 participants cycled a designated route and encountered an AV multiple times in two experimental sessions. In Session 1, participants cycled the route uninstructed, while in Session 2, they were instructed to verbally report whether they detected the presence or absence of a driver. Additionally, we recorded the participants' gaze behaviour with eye-tracking and their responses in post-session interviews. The interviews revealed that 30% of the cyclists spontaneously mentioned the absence of a driver (Session 1), and when instructed (Session 2), they detected the absence and presence of the driver with 93% accuracy. The eye-tracking data showed that cyclists looked more frequently and longer at the vehicle in Session 2 compared to Session 1. Furthermore, participants exhibited intermittent sampling of the vehicle, and they looked in front of the vehicle when it was far away and towards the windshield region when it was closer. The post-session interviews also indicated that participants were curious, felt safe, and reported a need to receive information about the AV's driving state. In conclusion, cyclists can detect the absence of a driver in the AV, and this detection may influence their perceptions of safety. Further research is needed to explore these findings in real-world traffic conditions.

I was headed headed west on 3rd Street from a mid-city senior center with 89-year-old Julie Finger, who showed no sign of fear. Our ride wasn't just any old car; it was a fully loaded electric Jaguar, and among other details worth sharing, one in particular stands out. Are you the least bit nervous? "No," she said with a giggle. Our robotaxi service was Waymo, the Google autonomous vehicle company that has fleets in San Francisco and Phoenix and began limited service in Los Angeles this spring in a 63-square-mile area between downtown L.A. and the beach. California is about to be hit by an aging population wave, and Steve Lopez is riding it.

The driver in the Chevy Suburban seemed bent on testing the Waymo robotaxi on the streets of downtown L.A. this week. Playing chicken against Silicon Valley's wheeled robot, he sharply swung into the next lane toward the Waymo. The white driverless Jaguar swerved to avoid the bigger car crossing the line and striking it. The human driver sped then ahead of the robotaxi and braked abruptly in front of it. The machine slowed in time to avoid a collision, shifted into the next lane and the Chevy moved on, ending a brief yet anxiety inducing interaction for a Los Angeles Times reporter and photographer riding in the Waymo vehicle.

Los Angeles commuters: Don't be alarmed, but driverless taxis may soon become a more common site on local streets. On March 1, state regulators gave Waymo, the self-driving taxi company owned by Google's parent, Alphabet, the green light to expand its robotaxi service to Los Angeles County, clearing the way for the company's expansion into one of the biggest markets in the country. While local transportation agencies deal with day-to-day traffic operations in their respective jurisdictions, the California Public Utilities Commission oversees the regulation of driverless vehicles across the state, superseding local governments. Waymo has not disclosed a timeline for when its service will become widely available, but a handful of Waymo vehicles are already roaming about the county, including around the USC campus, as part of its ongoing testing and promotion program. Under its new approval agreement, Waymo's driverless fleet can operate in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Inglewood, East Los Angeles, Compton and many more locales.