Waymo has achieved a fantastic milestone, reaching 10 million miles on public roads in 25 cities. These cities range from sunny California, dusty Arizona, and snowy Michigan, and from the high-speed roads around Phoenix to the dense urban streets of San Francisco said John Krafcik, CEO of Waymo in a post on Medium.
Whilst this milestone is huge, in the virtual world, their simulators are close to reaching 7 billion miles tested. Through the virtual world, Waymo can simulate multiple scenarios where the AI can be tested. This way the company can test new skills, refine existing ones, and practice extremely rare encounters, constantly challenging, verifying, and validating their software.
The aim for Waymo out of all this testing? Safety of course but the feel of familiarity and comfort that people are used to when being driven in a car by humans. And to achieve that, the software needs experience. Experience is the best coach and that is Waymo’s strategy in their pursuit of autonomous self-driving cars.
