Waymo has taken a significant step forward in its quest to create a self-driving car that can navigate the world in all kinds of conditions. The company's latest AI model, built on top of Google DeepMind's Genie 3, is designed to simulate environments that are rarely seen in real life, allowing it to better prepare its vehicles for the unexpected.
Until now, autonomous driving companies have relied heavily on training data collected from real cars and situations. However, this approach has limitations, particularly when it comes to rare or extreme events such as snow on a bridge or an elephant suddenly appearing on the road. To address these gaps, Waymo is using its new world model to create "hyper-realistic" simulations that can teach its AI how to handle such scenarios.
Genie 3, which powers the Waymo World Model, is a significant upgrade over previous models. It boasts long-horizon memory, allowing it to remember details for several minutes - a feature that was previously lacking in earlier attempts at world models. This means that the AI can better recall how objects were supposed to look even after wandering away from them.
Waymo's World Model is not just a straightforward port of Genie 3 with added videos; instead, it has undergone a specialized post-training process to generate both 2D video and 3D lidar outputs of the same scene. This allows Waymo to take its real-world video footage and use prompts to change the route the vehicle would take, resulting in more realistic and consistent simulations.
The company plans to utilize these simulations in various ways, including driving action control - a feature that enables it to modify the route taken by its vehicles based on simulated data. This could lead to improved realism and consistency in older reconstructive simulation methods.
Waymo's new AI model is set to aid its self-driving cars in adapting to different conditions. The company has added several new markets, including places with more challenging weather patterns such as Boston and Washington, D.C. However, the effectiveness of this technology depends on how accurately Genie 3 can simulate real-world conditions.
For now, Waymo's World Model is poised to revolutionize the autonomous driving industry by providing self-driving vehicles with a better understanding of complex scenarios.
Until now, autonomous driving companies have relied heavily on training data collected from real cars and situations. However, this approach has limitations, particularly when it comes to rare or extreme events such as snow on a bridge or an elephant suddenly appearing on the road. To address these gaps, Waymo is using its new world model to create "hyper-realistic" simulations that can teach its AI how to handle such scenarios.
Genie 3, which powers the Waymo World Model, is a significant upgrade over previous models. It boasts long-horizon memory, allowing it to remember details for several minutes - a feature that was previously lacking in earlier attempts at world models. This means that the AI can better recall how objects were supposed to look even after wandering away from them.
Waymo's World Model is not just a straightforward port of Genie 3 with added videos; instead, it has undergone a specialized post-training process to generate both 2D video and 3D lidar outputs of the same scene. This allows Waymo to take its real-world video footage and use prompts to change the route the vehicle would take, resulting in more realistic and consistent simulations.
The company plans to utilize these simulations in various ways, including driving action control - a feature that enables it to modify the route taken by its vehicles based on simulated data. This could lead to improved realism and consistency in older reconstructive simulation methods.
Waymo's new AI model is set to aid its self-driving cars in adapting to different conditions. The company has added several new markets, including places with more challenging weather patterns such as Boston and Washington, D.C. However, the effectiveness of this technology depends on how accurately Genie 3 can simulate real-world conditions.
For now, Waymo's World Model is poised to revolutionize the autonomous driving industry by providing self-driving vehicles with a better understanding of complex scenarios.
! It feels like they're really getting close to making these things as reliable as human drivers. I mean, think about it, when I was growing up, we used to play those video games where you had to navigate through crazy traffic and stuff, but now it seems like that's actually becoming a reality 
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! The idea of creating "hyper-realistic" simulations that can teach its AI how to handle rare or extreme events like snow on a bridge or an elephant on the road... yeah, that's some next-level stuff 
. I mean, using Genie 3 and making it more human-like with long-horizon memory 
is a huge upgrade.
. It's all about creating more realistic and consistent scenarios for the self-driving cars, so we can eventually see them navigating through crazy weather conditions like Boston and Washington, D.C. 
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? If it's on point, this could be a game-changer for the autonomous driving industry 
. I mean, we all know how unpredictable the weather can be, right? Snow on the bridge or an elephant crossing the road - who expects that?! 
And yet, these self-driving cars need to handle it like it's nothing. It's like trying to predict a weather forecast with complete accuracy 
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. And with Genie 3 powering it, they've got some serious muscle behind them 
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. If Waymo can get those simulations right, we might just have a future where driving is safer and more reliable than ever 
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They're really trying to make their self-driving cars super smart and adaptable, right? I mean, can you imagine driving in Boston or Washington D.C. without worrying about weird weather conditions? It's like they're creating a whole new world for their AI model to learn from... but how accurate are these simulations, though? Like, what if it encounters an elephant on the road (
) and doesn't know what to do?! I guess that's why they have so many different markets, huh? I wonder if we'll ever see self-driving cars in our everyday lives...
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. That's a major upgrade from earlier models and will definitely make their simulations more realistic 
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. Imagine being able to tell your car to take a different route if it thinks you'll get stuck in the snow 
anyway, i'm not surprised waymo is trying to solve this problem. it's crazy how they're using google deepmind's genie 3 to create these hyper-realistic simulations... like, isn't that just a fancy way of saying "we're gonna make fake stuff so our cars don't crash" 
but seriously though, i think it's cool that they're working on this. maybe one day we'll have self-driving cars that can handle anything and everyone will be able to get around without worrying about their grandpa getting hit by a car