from the no-they-don't-make-frisbees dept.
Google's self-driving car project will become an independent company within Alphabet Inc. called "Waymo".
From the announcement post on Medium:
Today, we're taking our next big step by becoming Waymo, a new Alphabet business. Waymo stands for a new way forward in mobility. We're a self-driving technology company with a mission to make it safe and easy for people and things to move around.
[...] Waymo may be a new company, but we're building on advanced self-driving technology developed over many years at Google. On October 20, 2015, we completed the world's first fully-self driven car ride. Steve Mahan rode alone in one of our prototype vehicles, cruising through Austin's suburbs. Steve is legally blind, so our sensors and software were his chauffeur. His route reflected the way millions of people could use a self-driving car in everyday life: riding from a park to a doctor's office and through typical neighborhoods. This ride was possible because our cars can now handle the most difficult driving tasks, such as detecting and responding to emergency vehicles, mastering multi-lane four-way stops, and anticipating what unpredictable humans will do on the road. We've honed these skills over 2 million miles of real-world driving, and in the last year alone we've completed one billion miles of testing in simulation.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 14 2016, @09:18AM
"and through typical neighborhoods"
Uhhhhhh - you're talking about Austin, Texas? Typical? Huh?
ICE is having a Pretti Good season.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2016, @09:25AM
Headline should say "Alphabet's self-driving car project." ;-)
(Score: 1) by rickatech on Wednesday December 14 2016, @10:23AM
Why does this seem like precurser to shutting down the project.
Apple recently spun down their car project. Google has better more lucrative ways to use AI than tie it to a highly regulated automotive industry applications.
(Score: 2) by TK on Wednesday December 14 2016, @07:22PM
Or they could be positioning it to be sold. Keep the software with Alphabet, sell the hardware as Waymo. Liability all goes to Waymo, and Alphabet can license the software to competitors.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday December 14 2016, @10:25AM
Couldn't they have figured out a better name? Even Way.ly or waymo.io sound better than this!
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday December 14 2016, @10:43AM
I can think of some names that are WayMo better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2016, @02:33PM
Sounds like the name of a fat farm.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday December 14 2016, @04:35PM
I would have picked: KnowGo!
(think about the pronounciation of that)
For some odd reason all scientific instruments searching for intelligent life are pointed away from Earth.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Wednesday December 14 2016, @07:10PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2016, @06:58PM
They must have been watching that one episode of Adventure Time.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Wednesday December 14 2016, @11:57AM
How about Where's Waldo? Complete with a distinctive paint scheme.
They have to spin off a separate company so it can have virtually no assets when they lose the inevitable lawsuits.
mastering multi-lane four-way stops, and anticipating what unpredictable humans will do on the road
Did they anticipate this: If I see a self-driving car at a four-way stop, I'm going to go first, because I know the SDC will yield. Soon, all SDCs will be queued up at four way stops, waiting for the end of rush hour.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 14 2016, @12:08PM
"I'm going to go first, because I know the SDC will yield."
Just change SDC to "timid old woman", and we already have that situation. It doesn't even take a multi-lane 4-way stop to confuse many people. One lane, from each of three, four, or five directions is sufficient to tie people into knots. I say "timid old woman" because that is the most usual suspect, but young and old, male and female all are represented at these 4-way stops. Traffic that should just flow through the intersection can be held up for several minutes by just one idiot.
ICE is having a Pretti Good season.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2016, @06:30PM
held up for several minutes by just one idiot.
Rather like SoylentNews, when Runaway is commenting.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday December 14 2016, @06:47PM
There's always a point where the timid human reacts to the angry people behind, and inches into the intersection, hoping someone will stop being dicks and actually yield.
You don't get that from an automatic car.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday December 14 2016, @12:30PM
I get the idea the SDC's will discover each other and negotiate who is doing what before we have time to realize the car is approaching the stop sign. If we were all SDC, we would not even need the sign or the stop. They would already have it figured out who goes at what speed so they all neatly miss each other at an intersection. I get the idea watching intersections would be akin to watching the teeth of gears meshing in a transmission.
Being I am past 65 years old and have seen a lot of things happen right in front of me... it would not surprise me if in our near ( before I die of old age ) future, all cars will be SDC, and trying to take a manual car onto the public highway will be like trying to access the Information Superhighway with an abacus. Remember, I grew up with vacuum tubes, and the idea of having a computer with the capacity of even an IMSAI 8080 was just a dream.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2016, @09:06PM
My abacus has RFC 1149 support, you insensitive clod!
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Wednesday December 14 2016, @02:00PM
> Did they anticipate this: If I see a self-driving car at a four-way stop, I'm going to go first, because I know the SDC will yield. Soon, all SDCs will be queued up at four way stops, waiting for the end of rush hour.
And there is nothing wrong with that. If you are in a self driving car, you are not in a rush. The optimist will say you are in your own space. You don't have to worry about driving, you can be watching a movie, coding, listening to music, reading a book. Doing whatever it is you would be doing if you were at home anyway. The pessimist will say you are there to be tracked, monitored and have ads served at you. The ultimate captive audience.
In both those cases how long your journey takes should not matter too much. The pessimist in me says the latter option (having you sit and look at ads) means Google will be far more interested in keeping you in the car as long as possible.
If you absolutely have to be somewhere at a specific time, well I expect Google will tell you when you have to set off in the self driving car, taking into account predicted traffic delays, so you end up on time, so even that is not a concern. It is like your entire life will be "managed" for you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2016, @02:52PM
So what you're saying is, in the future we'll all be stars on the Bang Bus Channel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2016, @05:28PM
Considering we will not have jobs. Yeah selling ourselves for crack may not be far off.
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Wednesday December 14 2016, @10:55PM
If you're lucky. You're more likely to be a star on Botherguts.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15 2016, @08:31AM
Jolly good, a yellow suit suits me.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Geezer on Wednesday December 14 2016, @02:48PM
"Whamo!"
(segue into ambulance/fire truck audio)