Waymo Shows How Self-Driving Sensors Handle Massive Desert Dust Storms
Waymo releases footage demonstrating how its autonomous vehicles use combined sensor data to identify pedestrians during extreme low-visibility events like Phoenix haboobs and San Francisco fog.
Waymo shares new videos that show how its self-driving technology handles extreme weather conditions like massive Phoenix dust storms, known as haboobs, and dense San Francisco fog. These giant walls of dust pose serious safety risks by drastically reducing visibility, prompting the company to demonstrate how its autonomous vehicles perceive the world when human drivers struggle to see.
The footage reveals that Waymo vehicles successfully identify a pedestrian crossing a street during a haboob by combining data from lidar, radar, and cameras. Instead of turning off sensors that struggle in the dust or fog, the system actively collects information from all sources simultaneously to build a reliable picture of the road and its surroundings.
This multi-sensor approach aims to overcome human visibility limitations, which the Department of Transportation links to 21% of annual U.S. vehicle crashes. However, Waymo acknowledges that autonomous vehicles do not belong on the road in every extreme weather scenario, noting that their systems automatically detect sudden changes like snowstorms to determine the safest course of action.