Waymo Is Bringing Its Autonomous Test Fleet To Atlanta

Waymo has announced that it will soon commence testing of its autonomous vehicles in Atlanta, Georgia.

Google’s self-driving division currently operates self-driving fleets in Arizona, California, Michigan, Texas, and Washington and will soon add metro Atlanta to that list.

The company will introduce the fleet in Atlanta when it has finished mapping the area with a human driven vehicle. From there, the prototypes will hit the road with a Google engineer behind the wheel at all times.

While most of the Waymo prototypes currently being tested still rely on a human in case something goes wrong, a handful were recently put onto public roads in the metro region of Phoenix without a human behind the wheel. Waymo says it has logged more than 4 million miles on public roads and billions of miles in simulation.

In the event of an emergency in one of these fully-autonomous prototypes, systems controlling the steering, braking, computer, and power systems will automatically bring the vehicle to a stop.

In recent times, Waymo has been looking to rapidly perfect its autonomous driving hardware and software. In October, for example, the firm announced that its fleet would soon contend with snow, sleet, and ice in the busy city streets of Michigan.

Hello ATL! Metro Atlanta is the next stop for Waymo's test program. Now that we have the world's first fully self-driving vehicles on public roads in AZ, we're looking to take our tech to more cities. pic.twitter.com/YFLvxkVMMd

— Waymo (@Waymo) January 22, 2018