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Uber's former self-driving lead pleads guilty to stealing from Google
After about three years of legal wrangling between Uber and Waymo over self-driving car tech, the engineer at the center of it has agreed to plead guilty to one count of stealing materials from Google. Anthony Levandowski was a lead engineer on the self-driving car project that's now known as Waymo, until he left to form his own company, Otto, which Uber then acquired. Reuters reports that the agreement will see all the other criminal charges go away while he admits to taking a file that tracked Google's goals for its self-driving car project. A court already ruled that Levandowski owes Google $179 million for violating his contract, and he has declared bankruptcy. Prosecutors said they will recommend a sentence of fewer than 30 months.
Richard Lawler03.19.2020
Waymo goes dark except for fully driverless rides
Waymo is joining Uber and Lyft in curtailing its ride services to limit the spread of COVID-19, with a notable exception. The Alphabet-owned company has paused both Waymo One service with human overseers in Phoenix as well as its California self-driving tests in order to protect the "health and safety" of passengers and the community. However, it planned to continue its fully driverless service in Phoenix as well as its UPS delivery services and truck testing, at least "for now." The company believed it could respect local and CDC health guidelines on social isolation with no human drivers involved.
Jon Fingas03.17.2020
After Math: Anything worth doing is worth overdoing
2020 is shaping up to be the year without conventions. Google I/O, Facebook F8, GDC, OMG, and MWC have already been called off, with exhibitors jumping ship from SXSW by the handful and Computex and E3 likely next on the chopping block. But these are not days for half measures, as this week's headlines illustrate.
Andrew Tarantola03.08.2020
Ex-Waymo engineer Levandowski ordered to pay Google $179 million (updated)
A court has ordered Anthony Levandowski to pay Google $179 million to end a contract dispute. He was once one of Google's most prized talents as someone who helped pioneer its work on self-driving vehicles. However, their relationship turned sour after he left the tech giant, which then accused him of poaching talents to start a new company and of stealing trade secrets to start his own firm.
Mariella Moon03.04.2020
Waymo’s fifth-generation Driver can peek around blind spots
Today, Waymo unveiled its fifth-generation Waymo Driver, the combination of hardware and software that guides its autonomous vehicles. According to the company, the new tech can spot a car door opening a city block away, give trucks the ability to see debris hundreds of meters ahead on the highway, help vehicles "peek" around blind spots and more.
Christine Fisher03.04.2020
Waymo's first outside investment round includes car industry heavyweights
Believe it or not, Waymo hasn't really leaned on outside help to fulfill its self-driving car ambitions -- Alphabet (and earlier, Google) has shouldered much of the load. Now, however, it's expanding its sources of cash. Waymo has announced its first external investment round, and you might recognize a few of the names contributing a shared $2.25 billion. Car tech giant Magna International and retailer AutoNation are making investments, as are well-established investment groups like Andreessen Horowitz, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Silver Lake and Mubadala.
Jon Fingas03.02.2020
Waymo doesn't like California's benchmark for self-driving research
Waymo is the latest company to criticize "disengagements," a metric that indicates how often a human driver is forced to take over from a fully-autonomous driving system. At the moment, every company with a self-driving car program in California must report their disengagements to the state's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). That includes Alphabet subsidiary Waymo, the General Motors-owned Cruise, Aurora and Nuro. The metric wasn't meant to create a public-facing leaderboard. However, industry onlookers have inevitably used disengagements to compare the maturity of these companies and the sophistication of their self-driving software. Why? Because it's rare for startups to give out lots of meaningful data, especially in a way that can be directly compared to their competition. Disengagements aren't perfect, but as the age-old saying goes, something is better than nothing.
Nick Summers02.27.2020
Ex-Waymo driver arrested for causing one of its vans to hit his car
Waymo vehicles get involved in accidental collisions sometimes, but it looks like a January 30th crash in Tempe, Arizona was no accident at all. Authorities have arrested Raymond Tang, an ex-Waymo driver who the company described as "a disgruntled former" contractor, on suspicion that he deliberately caused an accident wherein one of the company's self-driving vans crashed into his passenger car.
Mariella Moon02.13.2020
Waymo's self-driving vans will carry UPS packages in Phoenix
Waymo is expanding its foray into self-driving delivery vehicles. The Alphabet brand is teaming with UPS on a pilot that will have autonomous Chrysler Pacifica vans carry packages in the metro Phoenix area. They'll be shuttling cargo from UPS Stores to the courier's Tempe processing hub, not directly to customers, but they will drive on their own. A human will stay aboard to keep watch over operations.
Jon Fingas01.29.2020
Waymo expands its autonomous big rig tests to Texas and New Mexico
If you're in Texas or New Mexico, you might soon see Waymo's autonomous trucks on the road. Alphabet's self-driving division is expanding tests of its big rigs to those states.
Kris Holt01.23.2020
A $100 box is the cheapest way we've seen to add LiDAR to cars
Velodyne, one of the companies that helped invent modern LiDAR, says it has developed a component that will make adding laser-based radar to autonomous cars and other vehicles more affordable. At CES, the company showed off its new Velabit LiDAR system, which it plans to sell to manufacturers for about $100 per unit.
Igor Bonifacic01.07.2020
Waymo enters the UK with acquisition of self-driving AI startup Latent Logic
Google's parent company, Alphabet, has been pushing the self-driving car industry forward through its subsidiary Waymo. To date, the company has operated primarily within the US, but a recent acquisition demonstrates its interest in expanding internationally as well. As reported by The Guardian, Waymo has bought the UK-based AI company Latent Logic, which specializes in the testing of autonomous vehicles.
Georgina Torbet12.13.2019
Uber may have to pay Waymo or redesign its self-driving software
In 2017, Waymo accused Uber of stealing its autonomous driving trade secrets. You may have thought the Uber-Waymo legal battle was over when, in 2018, the companies reached a settlement and Uber agreed to pay around $245 million. But as part of the settlement, the parties brought in an independent software expert to review Uber's software and make sure it didn't misappropriate Waymo's intellectual property. Now, the review is complete, and Uber admits that the findings are not good.
Christine Fisher11.07.2019
Waymo’s fully-automated shuttles are picking up riders around Phoenix
Waymo is now offering limited "rider-only" trips in Phoenix, Arizona, Chief Executive John Krafcik told reporters this weekend. At the moment, the fully-autonomous ridesharing service is only available to a few hundred early users.
Christine Fisher10.28.2019
Waymo is close to offering autonomous rides with no backup driver
Waymo has sent out an email to its earliest ride-hailing customers, letting them know that completely driverless cars are on the way. And yes, the company truly means rides that don't have a human backup driver behind the wheel. The letter, which was posted on Reddit, doesn't have an exact starting date for driver-free rides, only mentioning that customers may be matched with one "soon."
Mariella Moon10.10.2019
Waymo cars will start mapping streets in Los Angeles
Waymo might just expand its self-driving car service to southern California... eventually. The Alphabet company's cars will start mapping some Los Angeles streets this week to explore the possibility of fitting autonomous vehicles into the city's "dynamic transportation environment." The firm told Engadget that its initial effort will be limited to three cars in the downtown area and the Miracle Mile, but that still raise the possibility of seeing a modified Pacifica cruising down the boulevard.
Jon Fingas10.07.2019
Feds charge former Waymo engineer with 33 counts of stealing trade secrets
Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer at the center of Waymo and Uber's recent trade secret court case, could soon find himself behind bars. On Tuesday, federal prosecutors with the Northern District of California charged Levandowski with 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets from Waymo, reports The New York Times. If he's convicted, Levandowski faces a maximum of 10 years in prison. He'll also have to pay a $250,000 fine for every trade secret he allegedly stole from his former employer.
Igor Bonifacic08.27.2019
Waymo shares some of its self-driving car data to help researchers
Self-driving car data is intensely valuable, and it's frequently considered one of Waymo's advantages -- it has more experience than virtually anyone. Now, however, the company is sharing some of that knowledge with the rest of the world. It's launching a Waymo Open Dataset that gives researchers free access to synced camera and LiDAR data from the company's autonomous vehicles across a variety of driving conditions and locales. It only covers 1,000 driving segments of 20 seconds each, but that's 200,000 frames per sensor, 12 million 3D object labels and 1.2 million 2D labels -- that could be a lot to work with.
Jon Fingas08.21.2019
Waymo is rain-testing its self-driving cars in Florida
Waymo hopes its autonomous driving tech can withstand Florida's notorious rainy season. The company announced today that it will be rain testing a set of Chrysler Pacificas and a Jaguar I-Pace throughout the Sunshine State over the next several weeks.
Amrita Khalid08.20.2019
Waymo uses evolutionary competition to improve its self-driving cars
The process of training self-driving car AI is seldom efficient when you need to either use a massive amount of computing power to train systems in parallel or else have researchers spend ages manually weeding out bad systems. Waymo might have a smarter approach: use the same principles that guide evolution. The company has partnered with DeepMind on a "Population Based Training" method for pedestrian detection that has the best neural networks advance much like lifeforms do in natural selection, saving time and effort.
Jon Fingas07.28.2019