Look, ma! No hands! Waymo to test true self-driving cars in US with Uber-style hailing app

Google stablemate Waymo has begun testing its self-driving cars on the mean streets of Phoenix, Arizona, without a single driver at the wheel.

The organization ultimately wants people to request these fully autonomous vehicles on demand from an app, Uber-style.

Chief exec John Krafcik today told the WebSummit conference in Lisbon, Portugal, that the robo-ride biz has let a fleet of its software-controlled cars loose in a patch of the US desert state with no humans at the controls. The vehicles do not travel on predetermined routes nor on a demo loop, and are fully driverless, we're told.

Right now, it appears they have someone inside during trips – either a passenger, a Waymo engineer, or both – but it's hoped they can be truly human-free in the near future.

These tests are possible thanks to Arizona allowing true robo-rides on its streets, amid the gradual relaxing of rules on computer-controlled vehicles across America. This is all in a bid to foster development and keep the nation ahead of the rest of the world in self-driving technology.

"Over time, we’ll expand to cover the entire Phoenix region – an area much larger than Greater London," said Krafcik. "Our ultimate goal is to bring our fully self-driving technology to more cities in the US and around the world."

He said in the next few months folks "will get to experience these fully self-driving rides" by summoning them via a Lyft-style ride-hailing app. In a statement, the team expanded on this, explaining:

"Since the beginning of this year, our early riders have been using our fleet — with a test driver at the wheel — to go to work, school, soccer practice and more. Soon, they’ll be able to make these trips in a fully self-driving car, with Waymo as their chauffeur," said Krafcik.

Two years ago, the biz completed a fully self-driving trip on public roads, when a blind man traveled from a park to a doctor’s office without anyone in the driver’s seat. We're told a Waymo engineer will be present during early tests of the biz's ride-hailing app service, and will eventually leave passengers alone with the robo-rides during their journeys. There will be an emergency stop button for a passenger to hit, just in case.

Apparently, the Alphabet-owned biz stopped developing a feature that required drivers to take control in dangerous moments because test drivers kept dozing off behind the wheel; instead, it's hoped, the code will take care of such situations automatically. Waymo insists its technology is safe. ®