00:00:00 · Dmitri Dolgov, Ruchi Sanghvi, Aditya Agarwal
[00:00:00] S0: When we started in 2009, it was not about building a product. The question at that time was, like, should we even try? Is the, you know, time appropriate, should we just, you know, go back and, you know, come back in a decade or so? What does it mean for autonomous vehicles to be ready? And what's good enough? And what if the brakes fail? What if the steering fails? What if you lose power? [00:00:16] S1: Which nine was the hardest? [00:00:17] S0: The one you're working on right now is always the the kind of the hardest, but also the most interesting, the most exciting one. I I can give you the, you know, the model that we have right now. I don't think you'll know what to do with it. It's been, you know, seventeen years to get to where we are today. [00:00:32] S2: I still vividly remember my own first Waymo ride. We had just finished the SPC holiday party with just, 10 of us, our team members. And one of our team members said that they just got early access. So why don't we take Waymo to our next spot? And I remember getting in. I was sitting in the front seat, and I'm sure you get this. It felt like a religious experience. There's no one driving the car. It all worked. I was equal parts fascinated, scared a little bit, amazed. You hear that often, that it's kind of feeling like a quasi religious experience when people have this for the first time.
00:00:32 · Aditya Agarwal, Dmitri Dolgov
[00:00:32] S2: I still vividly remember my own first Waymo ride. We had just finished the SPC holiday party with just, 10 of us, our team members. And one of our team members said that they just got early access. So why don't we take Waymo to our next spot? And I remember getting in. I was sitting in the front seat, and I'm sure you get this. It felt like a religious experience. There's no one driving the car. It all worked. I was equal parts fascinated, scared a little bit, amazed. You hear that often, that it's kind of feeling like a quasi religious experience when people have this for the first time. [00:01:10] S0: The word magic does come up. Some people are, you know, excited and very comfortable even before they get in. Some are, you know, more nervous. Some, you know, need somebody to actually, you know, handhold them, get them to be comfortable. And, yeah, they're they're reluctant. But once you get in and you experience the ride, you know, the the safety, the comfort of it, people start trusting it. They appreciate the value of it. [00:01:34] S2: Do you remember your own first ride? I guess you must have had so many first rides in different generations. But do you remember the first one that was perhaps autonomous on the streets of San Francisco and you feeling as though, oh, wow. This this this this works?
00:01:34 · Aditya Agarwal, Dmitri Dolgov
[00:01:34] S2: Do you remember your own first ride? I guess you must have had so many first rides in different generations. But do you remember the first one that was perhaps autonomous on the streets of San Francisco and you feeling as though, oh, wow. This this this this works? [00:01:49] S0: Yeah. There's been a... You know, this whole has been getting close to two decades now. So I've had my share of, yeah, first moments. There was the, you know, first time when we bought a car with no driver. In fact, it didn't even have steering wheel and pedals on public roads. That was in 2015. Then there was, I remember, the ride in 2017 when it was a small... I had, like, four of us from the team who took a first ride when we started doing regular fully autonomous operations in Chandler that was on our fourth generation vehicle. I do remember the first time... Was it not the first time I took a ride in San Francisco, but I do remember, you know, I think it was around the holiday season, and I think it was 2022, where I was using it to get around the city. It was getting close to Christmas. It was busy times. And, yeah, it was that time where you kind of take a step back and reflect on the year. And I remember walking out of the car and thinking, like, this one is different. And this one, it felt like it's, know, the start of something, you know, very real. And... Okay. I'll give you more... One more. [00:02:59] S2: You got
00:02:59 · Aditya Agarwal, Dmitri Dolgov
[00:02:59] S2: You got [00:03:00] S0: you got me. You got me. Remembering all the interesting first moments, another one was when we opened up freeways for fully autonomous operations, and, you know, my wife and I took it together. You know, we had a a date night, so we're coming up from Palo Alto to the city, and, you see, like, a whole bunch of Waymo's in the city. So it's one of those moments where you take a step back and you kinda reflect on, you know, how far this the industry, and, you know, our company has gone. So, those are definitely memorable. [00:03:29] S2: Yeah. It's incredible. We were just seeing this, on an intersection that we just got into the car, but there were six Waymo's that we saw right at the intersection. And, And we'll get into this in the talk later, but how much of a jump is it to kind of go from thinking about just one Waymo that is driving around the city to now thinking of them as a system of agents almost, like a multi agent kind of system. Like, is there any coordination going on between the Waymo's?
00:03:29 · Aditya Agarwal, Dmitri Dolgov
[00:03:29] S2: Yeah. It's incredible. We were just seeing this, on an intersection that we just got into the car, but there were six Waymo's that we saw right at the intersection. And, And we'll get into this in the talk later, but how much of a jump is it to kind of go from thinking about just one Waymo that is driving around the city to now thinking of them as a system of agents almost, like a multi agent kind of system. Like, is there any coordination going on between the Waymo's? [00:03:59] S0: There's definitely ordinations. You know, each one is fully autonomous. Sure. Yep. But there is... They don't talk directly to each other, but there's definitely coordination Sure. The fleet level. Right? When you... Kind of the obvious Yeah. Out which one is gonna go and pick up what passenger when, you know, we are... They're getting ready. The fleet is getting ready for, you know, your rush hour Yeah. In the, yeah, on a weekday, at the end of the day, or on a Saturday night, there's coordination that, you know, some will preposition themselves, others will go back to the depots and, you know, get charged up and cleaned up. So there's definitely that. They also share information, not directly with each other, but, you know, if one encounters, let's say, in a scene of an accident, it will Oh, [00:04:41] S2: so they are... Oh, that's amazing. [00:04:42] S0: Yeah. So the other ones, you know, get immediately aware of that in real time. [00:04:45] S2: But none of the manual, like, me updating Waze, you know, like, for the other drivers. Okay. Or I have to.
00:04:45 · Aditya Agarwal, Dmitri Dolgov
[00:04:45] S2: But none of the manual, like, me updating Waze, you know, like, for the other drivers. Okay. Or I have to. [00:04:50] S0: Yeah. Well, one more interesting coordination example is in the depots Okay. Where, you know, it's tighter quarters, and then they have to coordinate where they go, which one, you know, is gonna use which charging station. So that one is actually kind of pretty amazing to see. It's like a a well choreographed ballet of robots Yeah. In the inside quarters. [00:05:11] S2: I wanna go back to something that you said, which, you know, I often think about as an engineer. I've built many systems. None of the systems have had the failure modes, if you will, as if you're launching this. So I often think about myself, what must it have felt like the first time you were getting essentially a random passenger who was basically flagging down a Waymo, and then you're putting them in. Must have felt like such a sense of responsibility. Absolutely. [00:05:40] S0: Yeah. This is, you know, the... Yeah. The stakes are high. [00:05:43] S2: The stakes are high. [00:05:43] S0: Yeah. They're, you know, putting into a real vehicle with Yeah. You know, real mass traveling to real speeds. And it's not just about, of course, people in the car. It's about, you know, sharing the environment Yeah. The, you know, and the safety of the, you know, other people that we share the roads with, you know, pedestrian cyclists, you know, other vehicles. That's definitely something we take super, super seriously. That... You know, one of the things that makes this problem so hard.