Waymo is a California-based autonomous driving technology development company. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google. Google began its development of autonomous vehicle technology in 2009 at its X lab, which at the time was run by co-founder Sergey Brin.
The project was launched by Sebastian Thrun, the former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) and Anthony Levandowski. In December 2016, the unit was renamed Waymo and spun-off into a new division in Alphabet.
Waymo now operates a commercial self-driving taxi service in the greater Phoenix, Arizona area. In October 2020, it expanded the service to the public. At the time, it was the only self-driving commercial service that operates without safety backup drivers in the vehicle.
Waymo also is developing its technology for use in other vehicles, including delivery vans and Class 8 tractor-trailers for delivery and logistics.
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Developing autonomous vehicles has turned out to be much harder than originally thought. Companies across the board, but especially those developing robotaxis, have universally missed the commercialization dates they once predicted. One of the hardest problems in autonomous driving, according to Waymo, is accurate behavior prediction of other road users. While progress has certainly been…