Waymo announces 6th-generation Waymo Driver with significantly reduced cost

Waymo arguably has one of the best autonomous driving systems in the world. However, it has been criticized for relying on a large number of cameras, lidars, and sensors, which leads to high costs for the self-driving vehicle. Following these criticisms, Waymo today announced its 6th-generation autonomous driving system that delivers more resolution, range, compute power, and new capabilities. Despite the long list of improvements, the 6th-generation hardware uses fewer cameras, lidars, and sensors, thereby reducing the overall cost.

The 6th-generation Waymo Driver comes with 13 cameras, 4 lidars, 6 radars, and an array of external audio receivers (EARs). For comparison, the 5th gen Waymo Driver has 29 cameras and 5 lidars. Waymo claims that this new sensor suite is optimized for greater performance at a significantly reduced cost, without compromising on the safety of the vehicle. This upgraded sensor suite delivers overlapping 360-degree fields of view, up to 500 meters away, day and night, and in a range of weather conditions. This will enable the vehicle to navigate different types of events it might encounter in the real world on various road conditions.

Satish Jeyachandran, Vice President of Engineering at Waymo, wrote the following while announcing the 6th generation Waymo Driver:

"With six generations of hardware manufactured and integrated into thousands of vehicles, we have significant experience developing and operating fully autonomous technology at scale. To safely and swiftly integrate our next-generation Driver into our fleet, we test and validate our new hardware – from the component to the system level – through a rigorous regimen of structured tests, real-world driving, and simulation."

According to Waymo, the new 6th Gen driver's performance in simulation shows promising improvements. They are on track to begin operating without a human behind the wheel in about half the time compared to previous generations. Waymo's 6th-generation hardware suite is already undergoing testing on public roads.