A Waymo autonomous taxi collided with a delivery robot from the company Serve Robotics having difficulty getting onto a sidewalk in Los Angeles on December 27.
A collision between two autonomous robots. On December 27, an autonomous taxi from Waymo, a Google subsidiary, collided with a food delivery robot in an intersection in Los Angeles. As shown in a video posted on Reddit, the second, which was designed by the company Serve Robotics, crossed a street and was trying to get on the sidewalk when it was hit by Waymo's vehicle.
According to the person behind the video, the delivery robot crossed when the pedestrian light was already red. Although he managed to avoid a first car, which passed in front of him, he did not manage to get on the sidewalk the first time. So he backed up a little to try again and that's when the collision happened.
Inanimate object
Contacted by the specialist site Techcrunch, Waymo explained that its system, Waymo Driver, had identified the delivery robot as an inanimate object. Designed to favor the safest route based on the information available to it at any time, its behavior towards other users changes depending on them.
For example, it is programmed to be more careful in the presence of pedestrians and children. In this case, the autonomous taxi braked suddenly while traveling at a speed of 6.4 km/h, according to the Waymo spokesperson.
For its part, Serve Robotics claimed that this was the first time that one of its robots had been the victim of a collision, specifying that it was supervised remotely during the incident, which is always the case for the crossroads.
Note that neither robot was damaged. After being stuck for a minute, they each went their separate ways.
