Comment Re:robot parking lot: no need for lights, sounds? (Score 3, Interesting) 64
From here in my comfortable chair it's hard to judge how bad the situation is, vs. to what extent it might be a form of protest by somebody who just doesn't like self-driving cars.
There's lots of video of one of the lots in question. Here's a good one where you can see one car backing up causing a chain reaction honk on all the others: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3F...
Even if they legally can't disable the horns while in that lot, there's at least two simple things I can think of off the top of my head they could do to help mitigate it: The first would be redesigning that lot to be pull-through so that the cars don't ever have to back up. The second would be tweaking the algorithm (and they should be able to easily do it specifically for that geolocation since Waymo considers mapping data to be another sensor just as important as the lidar) so that the cars don't creep up on each other like that and trigger a chain reaction when one backs up.
But even if they were able to make those change, I'd say that Waymo probably shouldn't be operating out of a lot that's directly underneath a big apartment building. Particularly not during the quiet hours.