February 9, 2022 – An autonomous truck startup called Waabi has developed what it calls “the ultimate school for self-driving vehicles” – one that requires humans to spend less time tutoring them on actual roads.
Why it matters: The more that autonomous vehicles learn to drive in the virtual world, the less time they need to practice on physical streets, which could be a safer, faster way to bring them to market.
How it works: Today’s method for educating self-driving cars is a mix of simulation and real-world driving – one that’s very labor-intensive for humans. AVs can’t possibly log enough real-world test miles to prepare for every potential scenario – like an airplane landing on the road ahead, for example. So instead, developers drive cars around collecting sensor data, which they use to create a digital representation of the journey – with pools of people manually labeling objects like trees, curbs and pedestrians.
