i was in Phoenix this weekend and saw lots of Waymo self driving taxis around. I have had a Tesla for quite a while now and have been skeptical of their self driving technology. While the Waymo cars look a bit odd with a big lidar (?) sensor on top and other sensors bulging out around the corners, I was intrigued. I also learned that they were only for surface roads and would not take the highways. Ok.

Had a short trip to make and decided to give it a go. Installed the app and found it easy to use, more or less an Uber clone. First thing was it didn’t come right to us like a taxi or Uber would. We had to walk out to the road from the hotel front door. Not a big deal. I used Bluetooth on my phone to open the doors and we were off. The car was a nice, nondescript Jaguar and was a brisk ride. It talked to us and gave information on how the system worked (door locks, etc). Got to the destination and again it dropped off on the side street two doors down from the actual drop off location, which was on a sort of busy street. Again, not a huge problem. I was wondering if the robots were going to ask for a tip, but it did not. All in all a pleasant experience.

Technical details: first, I spent most of my adult life working with fairly high end image processing hardware and software, including a stint in my youth working on the military’s Autonomous Land Vehicle. I was a bit skeptical of Teslas approach and claims. Taking an “AI” approach seems problematic to me, since such systems are difficult to analyze and often fail spectacularly. Not things you want in a vehicle. When Tesla moved to an image-only approach and even eliminated some basic sensors, I was even more skeptical. But I like the Waymo approach and will use it again. Granted it is just for local roads and Phoenix seems to be a near ideal environment, with good weather most of the time and grid-like streets that are mostly in good repair. I can even see owning this sort of technology in some future vehicle.