Self-driving cars
Cruise with robotaxi rides without a person at the wheel
A self-driving car from the General Motors subsidiary Cruise on the road. Photo: Andrej Sokolow / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
It stops at traffic lights and also lets a truck that is blocking the road park. The Cruise company let a car drive without a security driver at the wheel.
General Motors-owned Cruise has reached a milestone on its way to becoming a robotaxi service in San Francisco.
Co-founder Kyle Vogt drove through town as a passenger in an autonomous car without a safety driver at the wheel. Before he ordered it via the app, the vehicle was on its own through the city, as Vogt wrote on Twitter during the night.
Cruise put the car on the road shortly before midnight on Monday, at a time with relatively little traffic. A video published by the company shows how the robot taxi stops at traffic lights and, among other things, lets a truck that is blocking the street park.
The GM subsidiary and the Google sister company Waymo had received permission to operate Robotaxi services from the California traffic authority about a month ago. Cruise is allowed to send its completely driverless cars onto the streets of San Francisco between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. and they can travel at a maximum of 30 miles per hour (a good 48 km / h).
Waymo is also working on a robot taxi service in San Francisco. In the city of Phoenix, Arizona, some residents have been able to order a Waymo van without a person behind the wheel for some time. However, the traffic there is considered to be less complex than in San Francisco. Waymo also sends his cars onto the streets in New York to create precise maps. You should be driven by people through Manhattan, as the company announced on Wednesday. They also want to learn from traffic in New York and thus improve the software.
In addition to Waymo and Cruise, Apple and various start-ups as well as car manufacturers and their suppliers are also working on technology for autonomous driving. At the same time, the development is taking significantly longer than promised a few years ago.