Especially if you live in California, it looks like the autonomous driving trend will catch on on its own.
Wayve, a British startup that has received more than $1 billion in funding, is now joining them by launching road tests of its AI learning system on the streets of San Francisco and the Bay Area.
This announcement comes just weeks after Tesla unveiled its Robotaxi at the Warner Bros. studio. in Burbank, California. In San Francisco there was also an accident last year that forced Basic Motors’ Cruise robotaxi service to cease operations. And most notably in California, Waymo, the only robotaxi service operating in the US, was the first to deploy its fleet of autonomous vehicles.
As part of its movement, Wayve opened a new office in Silicon Valley to support its US expansion and AI development. Comparable to Tesla’s Full-Self Driving (FSD) software, the company says it uses AI to provide automakers with a variety of automation and driver assistance features.
“We are now testing our AI software in real-world environments on two continents,” Alex Kendall, Wayve co-founder and CEO, said in a statement.
The company has been testing on UK roads since 2018. It got a big boost at the start of this year raised over a billion dollars in a move led by Softbank and joined by Microsoft and Nvidia. In August, Uber also said will invest to help develop Wayve technology.
Like Tesla’s FSD, Wayve’s software provides advanced driver assistance systems that still require driver supervision.
Before driverless vehicles can operate legally, they must first pass rigorous safety tests.
So far, Waymo’s technology, which relies on pre-mapped roads, sensors, cameras, radar and lidar (laser beam radar), is the only company to receive clearance from US regulators.
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