Elon Musk once said Waymo's robotaxis can't drive on highways because of their sensors. Waymo just did it.

"Back in August, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Waymo can't drive on highways because of the mix of sensors on the Alphabet company's robotaxis. Waymo's fifth-generation autonomous driving platform has five lidars, six radar sensors, and 29 cameras. It's this mix of lidar, radar, and cameras, Musk wrote on X, that leads to "sensor contention" in which the information from the lidar and radars "disagree" with the cameras."

""This sensor ambiguity causes increased, not decreased, risk," Musk wrote. "That's why Waymos can't drive on highways." On Wednesday, the robotaxi company began providing paid trips on major freeways in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix for select users. Business Insider demoed a freeway ride last week, taking the 101 freeway in California's Bay Area. The route cut the commute time by 17 minutes compared to a Waymo ride without freeway access, Business Insider found. There were no notable incidents."

"Musk has long been vocal about his stance against lidar - a type of sensor that shoots laser light to measure the distance to objects. While Tesla uses lidar for internal testing, Musk has said that the sensor is an expensive "crutch" that could get in the way of effectively scaling robotaxis. "Anyone relying on lidar is doomed," he said in 2019. Musk, for his part, is not making up claims about sensors providing conflicting readings of the real-world environment."

Waymo began offering paid fully autonomous robotaxi rides on major freeways in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix to select users. The company's fifth-generation autonomous driving platform uses five lidars, six radar sensors, and 29 cameras. A claim asserts that mixing lidar, radar, and camera inputs can produce "sensor contention" where lidar and radar disagree with cameras, increasing risk. Business Insider's freeway demo cut commute time by 17 minutes on the 101 with no notable incidents. Tesla opposes lidar as an expensive "crutch" that could hinder scaling; Waymo researchers acknowledge sensor input ambiguity and explore mitigation methods that do not fully resolve it.

Read at Business Insider