Roundabouts. They trapped Clark Griswold in National Lampoon’s European Vacation and now they’ve tripped up a Waymo robotaxi.
A video is circulating on social media showing a Waymo robotaxi going round and round on a roundabout — as if it is stuck in a loop. A Waymo spokesperson told TechCrunch there were no passengers onboard the vehicle in the video, and said the company has already addressed the issue by deploying a software update to its fleet.
TechCrunch has asked Waymo for more information regarding the underlying logic that led to this strange behavior, and how engineers ended up correcting for such a unique scenario.
Videos capturing odd robotaxi behavior has become more prevalent in the past year, particularly in San Francisco — a hub of autonomous vehicle activity. For instance, earlier this year one woman set up a livestream that showed Waymo vehicles honking all night in a parking lot near her San Francisco apartment.
