Especially if you live in California, it might seem as if the autonomous driving trend is moving at full-speed and of its own accord.
Wayve, a UK startup that has received over $1 billion in funding, is now joining the crowded party by launching on-road testing of its AI-learning system on the streets of San Francisco and the Bay Area.
The announcement comes just weeks after Tesla unveiled its Robotaxi at the Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, California. It was also in San Francisco that an accident last year forced General Motors’ robotaxi service Cruise to stop its operations. And it’s mostly in California that Waymo, the only functioning robotaxi service in the U.S., first deployed its fleet of self-driving cars.
As part of its move, Wayve opened a new office in Silicon Valley to support its U.S. expansion and AI development. Similarly to Tesla’s Full-Self Driving (FSD) software, the company says it’s using AI to provide automakers with a full range of driver assistance and automation features.
“We are now testing our AI software in real-world environments across two continents,” said Alex Kendall, Wayve co-founder and CEO, in a statement.
The company has already conducted tests on UK roads since 2018. It received a huge boost earlier this year, when it raised over $1 billion in a move led by Softbank and joined by Microsoft and Nvidia. In August, Uber also said it would invest to help the development of Wayve’s technology.
Just like Tesla’s FSD, Wayve’s software provides an advanced driver assistance system which still requires driver supervision.
Before driverless vehicles can legally hit the road, they must first pass tight safety tests.
So far, Waymo’s technology, which relies on pre-mapped roads, sensors, cameras, radar and lidar (a laser-light radar), is the only company to have received the nod from U.S. regulators.
