GW Expert: Self-Driving Taxi Service Waymo Expands into Two California Cities

Waymo, Alphabet’s robotaxi service, is now expanding service into Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area after California state regulators gave the autonomous vehicles the green light. According to Quartz,  the decision “will be Waymo’s biggest test since it first spun up rumors of becoming a driverless competitor to Uber back in 2018.”

If you would like more context on this matter, please consider Samer Hamdar, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the George Washington University.  Under Hamdar’s supervision, the Center for Intelligent Systems Research conducts research activities in mainly three areas. The first area is related to vehicular and pedestrian traffic dynamics where multiple data sources (driving simulator, instrumented vehicle, detectors and data libraries) are utilized to calibrate and validate newly developed and existing models in different weather and infrastructure-related conditions. The second area focuses on disaster management and evacuation analysis. The research team is studying how social networks may be translated into transportation demand loading patterns in response to different information propagation strategies. The third area aims to build more sustainable multi-modal networks with special attention to non-motorized transportation modes.

If you would like to speak with Prof. Hamdar, please contact GW Senior Media Relations Specialist Cate Douglass at [email protected].