A Waymo robotaxi and a Serve delivery robot collided in Los Angeles
On December 27, a Waymo robotaxi and a Serve Robotics sidewalk delivery robot collided at a Los Angeles intersection, according to a video that’s circulating on social media.
The footage shows a Serve bot crossing a street in West Hollywood at night and trying to get onto the sidewalk. It reached the curb, backed up a little to correct itself and started moving toward the ramp. That’s when a Waymo making a right turn hit the little bot.
The person who posted the video said the Serve bot had run a red light before the collision, though that’s not clear from the footage.
One Reddit user commented on the video saying: “Waymo computers: ‘Doesn’t appear to be a human or animal.’ ‘No life form detected’ BAM!”
When TechCrunch asked Waymo whether the robotaxi saw the bot, a spokesperson said that the Waymo Driver system correctly observed that the delivery robot was an inanimate object. The Driver is designed to be a cautious defensive driver that prioritizes the safest driving path with the information it has at any given moment, and its ability to classify and distinguish different types of road users and objects informs its behavior around them. For example, the Driver is programmed to be more cautious around children and pedestrians.
This isn’t to say that Waymo’s Driver will just bulldoze anything inanimate; in this case, the delivery robot had paused at the curb before driving into the vehicle turning lane just as the Waymo robotaxi entered the intersection. At that point, the Waymo Driver applied hard braking before making contact with the delivery robot at 4 miles per hour, according to the Waymo spokesperson.
