A handful of the world’s most powerful companies are in a race to build the same technology: driverless cars. The one that does it first, but most importantly, best, stands to change the future of American cities forever. And now, after years of work, Google’s sister self-driving car project, Waymo, is gunning to take the lead. Both Waymo and Google are owned by the same parent company, Alphabet. [...]
“It is truly a city for robotic cars: All that matters is what’s on and directly abutting the asphalt,” writes the Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal, who was given access to the facility. Waymo engineers have reconstructed intersections that have proven difficult for their self-driving cars to maneuver in the past, like a two-lane roundabout they previously encountered in Austin, Texas. And like any good fake city, Castle has a full collection of props like bicycles, skateboards, plants, kids' toys, dummies, and of course, a lot of traffic cones, all of which are used to mock scenarios the robot cars might encounter in the real world. [...]
Waymo isn’t the only Silicon Valley company with virtual worlds for their robot cars to practice. Uber, which also has an ambitious self-driving car initiative, is hiring for multiple positions for its self-driving car project that describe building “games and 3D virtual environments” and “realistic worlds and situations.” The ride-sharing company has also tested its self-driving cars in real cities, like Pittsburgh, Tempe, and San Francisco. Uber is also in mired in a contentious court case with Waymo stemming from Uber’s acquisition of Otto, a self-driving truck startup. The founder of Otto, Anthony Levandowski, formerly worked as a top engineer leading Waymo’s self-driving car efforts and allegedly came on board at Uber with stolen trade secrets from Waymo.
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