Waymo Turns to Humans to Close Robotaxi Doors

Waymo turns to humans to close robotaxi doors

Human help is still needed to keep Waymo’s driverless taxis moving when passengers leave vehicle doors open.

The Door Problem: How Waymo’s Robotaxi Revolution Hit an Absurdly Human Snag

For all the billions poured into autonomous vehicle technology — the lidar arrays, the machine-learning algorithms, the painstaking mapping of every American intersection — it turns out one of the most vexing problems facing the robotaxi industry is breathtakingly mundane: passengers keep leaving the doors open. Waymo, the Alphabet-owned autonomous driving company widely regarded as the front-runner in the commercial robotaxi race, has quietly b…