A delivery van moves a little, brakes and tries again. Dogs keep wandering close to it. For a vehicle without a driver, simply getting down the street becomes quite a challenge.
The compact vehicle has cargo space rather than a visible driver’s cabin. China Now shared the clip on 19 October. The manufacturer, exact location and original filming date have not been confirmed.
An autonomous vehicle must perceive its surroundings, predict other road users’ movement and choose a route. Cameras and other sensors supply information. The footage does not establish the particular sensor combination on this van.
For its own vehicles, Waymo describes software that identifies objects, predicts movement and updates the driving path many times per second.
The dogs seem curious and playful, repeatedly approaching the van and wandering around it. The vehicle makes cautious progress between stops, but must keep allowing for a dog suddenly stepping back in front of its wheels.
That is one of the tricky challenges of autonomous driving: how do you keep a vehicle moving safely without stopping again at every nearby movement? Recognising a dog is only part of the task. The software also needs to assess where the animal might move and whether there is enough room to edge forward. Too much caution and the van barely moves; too little room for error and it becomes unsafe.
