Waymo arguably has one of the best autonomous driving systems in the world. However, it has been criticized for relying on a large number of cameras, lidars, and sensors, which leads to high costs for the self-driving vehicle. Following this criticism, Waymo today announced its 6th generation autonomous driving system, which offers more resolution, range, processing power, and new features. Despite the long list of improvements, the 6th generation hardware uses fewer cameras, lidars, and sensors, reducing overall costs.

The 6th generation Waymo Driver is equipped with 13 cameras, 4 lidar sensors, 6 radars, and a set of external audio receivers (EARs). By comparison, the 5th generation Waymo Driver has 29 cameras and 5 lidar sensors. Waymo claims that this new sensor unit is optimized for higher performance at a significantly lower cost, without compromising the safety of the vehicle. This improved sensor unit provides 360-degree overlapping fields of view, up to 500 meters wide, day and night, and in different weather conditions. This enables the vehicle to handle different types of events it might encounter in the real world in different road conditions.

Satish Jeyachandran, Vice President of Engineering at Waymo, wrote the following when announcing the 6th generation Waymo Driver:

“With six generations of hardware manufactured and integrated into thousands of vehicles, we have extensive experience developing and operating fully autonomous technology at scale. To safely and quickly integrate our next-generation driver into our fleet, we test and validate our new hardware – from the component to the system level – through a rigorous program of structured testing, real-world driving and simulation.”

According to Waymo, the performance of the new 6th generation drivers in simulation shows promising improvements. They are on track to operate without a human at the wheel in about half the time compared to previous generations. Waymo’s 6th generation hardware suite is already being tested on public roads.