Hi everyone, my name is YooJung Ahn.
I'm the Head of Design at Waymo.
I wish we could be together in person,
but I'm super excited to be here virtually
to share more on how we design our Waymo Driver.
So thank you so much for tuning in.
We have a lot of ground to cover today,
but first I'd like to take a few moments
to introduce you to Waymo, who we are,
what we are doing, and why we are doing it.
We are a self-driving technology company
with a mission to make it safe and easy
for people and things to get where they're going.
Fully self-driving vehicles hold the promise
to improve road safety and offer new mobility options
to millions of people.
Driving today is not exactly as safe as it could be,
which is why safety is at the core of Waymo's mission.
Globally there are close to 1.35 million deaths
every year due to vehicle crashes.
With more than half of those people being pedestrians,
motorcyclists, and cyclists.
And it goes beyond fatalities.
There are over 50 million injuries worldwide
caused by vehicle crashes every year.
There's a clear theme to the vast majority
of these incidents: human error and inattention.
In fact, 94% of crashes in the U.S.
involve human choice or error, whether it's speeding,
distraction from our phones, lack of sleep,
or drunk driving, there are a lot of factors
that lead to these statistics.
Over the last 10 years, we've put our technology
through the world's longest
and toughest ongoing driving test
to help address these grim statistics
we've self-driven more than 20 million miles
on public roads,
over 10 billion miles in simulation,
and across over 25 cities in the U.S.
That's hundreds of years of human driving experience
that benefits every vehicle in our fleet.
Let's take a deeper look at our history.
We started back in 2009
as the Google self-driving car project.
In the early days, we were focused on developing
the core capabilities of self-driving
and understanding the challenges.
In 2011, we started developing all of our own hardware
in-house, alongside our software, after realizing
nothing off the shelf was as advanced as we needed.
In 2013, we made a key decision to pivot
from developing a driver-assistant system
to exclusively pursuing fully self-driving technology.
So we took a clean sheet approach and developed Firefly,
a vehicle that could move people around cities
with no human driver.
Two years later in 2015, we completed the world's first
fully autonomous ride on public roads
with Firefly in Austin, Texas.
In 2016, with that landmark ride under our belts,
we transitioned from being part of Google,
and became Waymo, an independent company within Alphabet.
Since then, we've forged key partnerships with OEMs
like Fiat Chrysler and Jaguar Land Rover,
welcomed the members of the public
into our fully self-driving cars,
launched our self-driving trucking program,
and most recently, we begun offering
fully driverless rides to our riders.
Throughout this experience, we've been focused on building
the Waymo Driver, which is how we refer
to our self-driving technology.
There are two pieces to the Waymo Driver:
hardware and software.
On the hardware side we have a sensor suite
that includes lidar, cameras, radar,
and a powerful AI compute platform.
Combined, these sensors give our vehicles
a 360 degree view of the world, over 300 meters away.
On the software side, the brain of our self-driving
vehicles, we take all of the information
our sensors collect to answer four key questions:
Where am I?
What's around me?
What will happen next?
and what should I do?
Together, our hardware and software work in concert
to paint the complete picture of the world around the car
and enable us to navigate roads safely.
Our Waymo Driver can be deployed across a number
of different business applications globally,
serving many different industries.
Ride hailing is an important application of our Driver,
and our main focus.
Our technology can also make trucking safer
and more efficient, and fill a pressing need
for more drivers in many parts of the world.
Delivery is another important opportunity,
something we are testing now with partners,
like AutoNation, to deliver car parts
rapidly to their dealerships.
Our OEM partners are also interested in sharing
the Waymo Driver with their customers
through personally owned cars, and we will work with them
to bring that application to life.
These applications fall into two categories:
moving people, which we will do through Waymo One,
and moving things, which we will do through Waymo Via,
our new sub-brand focused on commercial goods delivery.
Now that you have a sense of Waymo
and the Driver we're building, I'd like to dive into
what we are here to talk about: design,
and how we think about it at Waymo.
Our process is guided by our design principles and language.
Developing design that is consistent, yet flexible,
is important for the tech industry,
because things change so fast,
from the technology, to the products.
At Waymo we follow four core design principles
for all of our products and have a design language
which evolves over time based on our strategy.
Our design principles are simple, honest,
approachable, and delightful.
Simplicity is embedded into our core at Waymo.
We make it simple and easy for anyone to get
from A to B, so our design should be easy to understand
and free of unnecessary elements.
Next is honest.
We put the utmost consideration and thought
into every part of our technology and service.
And all of our designs should be honest and thoughtful.
Then approachable. It's important that all of our designs
be easily accessible, sincere and friendly
to attract curious new customers
and create a sense of community.
And finally, delightful.
Our design should reflect our optimistic goals
and ambitions for the future
by inspiring wonder, delight, and intrigue.
Design language goes hand in hand with brand identity
and defines characteristics, colors,
and material applications of Waymo's products.
Whether they be a physical product like a vehicle,
or digital products,
such as, the passenger screens in our vehicles.
Design language really comes down to guiding
how the product looks and how it makes people feel.
Good design language requires strategic embodiment
of brand values and design principles,
and can't be established in a day.
Our current design language
is made up of four different pillars:
Pure, Flow, Balance, and Contrast.
Keeping the design pure and simple is important
for the Waymo Driver, especially since we have several
different vehicle platforms from different OEMs.
Because each of these OEMs has its own design language
which is beyond our control,
we have to keep our design as pure as possible
to be harmonious without aesthetic conflict.
Flow design has both functional and visual benefits
for the Waymo Driver.
It allows us to improve aerodynamics,
and reduce the visual mass.
Balance is important for the Waymo Driver's field of view
and mass distribution, but also is directly related
to how users perceive the safety and comfort
of our vehicle.
Since stable and balanced design gives people
a sense of safety.
Lastly, contrast helps to simplify
various different elements of the Waymo Driver
and has great functional benefits.
For example, we use both white and black coloring
across our sensor suite,
and both have different functional advantages.
To blend Waymo's design language with all other requirements
of the technology and platform, we constantly develop
concepts and verify on the vehicle.
While this is our current state,
our design language evolves over time...
...Which is exactly what I want to cover next.
Let's take a quick look at how our design has changed
over the last 10 years across three distinct phases,
five generations of the Waymo Driver,
and over 6 vehicle platforms.
(bright uplifting music)
Since our inception we've moved through
three main stages of design: Retrofitting,
building from the ground up, and applying our Driver
across multiple OEM platforms.
When we first started in 2009, design was very limited.
Our exterior sensors were mostly off the shelf
and exposed on the car.
The only design items were interior displays and controls.
This was more of a prototype stage
where we were solely focused
on achieving basic functionality.
Following our retrofit stage, we then designed our own
self-driving car from scratch, Firefly.
Building a self-driving car from the ground up
was a huge learning for us from both a technical
and customer standpoint.
After this valuable experience,
we realized that in order to scale our fleet faster,
we should focus on the technology and building our driver
instead of building a car.
To do that, we partnered with OEM companies,
like Fiat Chrysler and Jaguar,
to provide us with custom vehicles
that have enabled us to launch our ride hailing service
and commercial goods delivery.
This has been a huge design challenge,
since we've had to ensure Waymo's design and branding
is represented across the multiple different OEM platforms,
so that users can easily identify the Waymo Driver.
Also, how we approach design is fundamentally different.
Whereas OEMs are selling a car, we are selling a service.
Now, what I'm most excited for today!
Let's take a closer look
at our fifth-generation Waymo Driver
and its design details.
With this latest generation, we were motivated
to celebrate the Waymo Driver as a unique design element
separate from the vehicle platform,
which maintains its own design identity.
Here's what that looks like on our new vehicle platform,
The Jaguar I-PACE.
(upbeat electronic music)
Compared to previous generations,
our sensors and compute are even more powerful than before.
Every part is designed for scale, and it comes with
a distinctive Waymo look.
What are we are building is not a concept car,
we are designing our Driver for the real world,
to be used by our thousands of Waymo One riders
as well our B2B partners.
Here you can see the breakdown of our custom-built hardware
that makes up the fifth- generation Waymo Driver.
Lidar, cameras, and radar, as well as compute.
Each of them is more powerful than the previous generation
and equipped with enhanced capabilities.
First, let's look at our new family of lidar,
which has an even higher resolution
across a wider range.
As one of the Waymo Driver's most powerful sensors,
our lidar paints a picture
of its surroundings in great detail.
It sees the world in 3D and can see in the dark of night
without any illumination.
Our 360 Lidar, which is located in our dome,
can see up to 300 meters away,
and provides a bird's eye view of the cars,
cyclists, and pedestrians surrounding the vehicle.
At the same time, our latest perimeter lidars
placed at four points around the vehicle
offer unparalleled coverage with a wide field of view
to detect objects close to the vehicle.
Our new vision system, including 29 cameras,
provides our Waymo Driver with higher resolution images
and greater perspective.
Our cameras also have overlapping field of view
directly around our vehicle.
We've assembled them with cleaning systems
and heaters for the best performance
in any weather condition.
Our new long range cameras and 360 vision system
now see much farther than before
allowing us to identify important details,
like stop signs greater than 500 meters away.
In addition, our new perimeter vision system
works in conjunction with our perimeter lidars
to give the Waymo Driver another perspective
of objects close to the vehicle.
Our new peripheral vision system helps us reduce blind spots
caused by parked cars or large vehicles.
These new cameras enable us to peek around objects,
such as a truck driving in front of us,
to see what might be there,
and to make a decision about what to do.
Together, these various types of cameras
allow us to make decisions earlier and faster
with even more information than we've ever had before.
And lastly, our radar.
Waymo's new, state-of-the-art, high resolution imaging radar
located in six places around the vehicle,
tracks both static and moving objects,
can see small objects at greater distances,
and distinguish between closely spaced objects.
Radar compliments lidar and cameras
with its unique capabilities in weather conditions
such as rain, fog, and snow.
Now, let's take a look at how these sensors
are applied on the I-PACE.
On the roof, we have a combination of our 360 lidar,
360 cameras, long-range cameras, and two radars.
On the front, we have perimeter lidar and cameras.
On both sides of the vehicle, there is a combination
of radar, perimeter lidar and cameras,
and peripheral cameras.
And on the rear side of the vehicle,
we also have perimeter lidar and cameras,
peripheral cameras, and radars.
With this understanding of our sensor suite
and our new vehicle, let's talk about design considerations
that went into both the individual sensors,
as well as the Waymo Driver as a whole.
The first area we focus on is how design
can optimize the performance and safety of our hardware
in addition to providing aesthetic benefits.
As we just discussed, we have many different hardware
modules that need to be applied to our vehicles.
Finding the best location for all the sensors
is an important first step for the design.
Then we need to carefully design each hardware piece
and the housings to provide an uninterrupted field of view.
Throughout the process, we're working with engineering
to find the best possible position, angle,
and hardware that satisfies both the function and design.
So while some may say our sensors look too obvious
on the vehicle, they are designed
and placed where they need to be
to help maximize capability and safety.
Temperature and weather is another area
we have to think about in our design.
When you have many different types of hardware
constantly running, the parts generate heat.
On top of that,
we need to think of the varying weather conditions
our system could encounter.
It can be hot in Phoenix, cold in Detroit,
and wet in San Francisco, all at the same time.
And our Waymo Driver needs to be able to function
in all of these conditions consistently.
We also test against the most extreme of conditions.
This is one of our early engineering vehicles
that we took to Death Valley to do thermal testing.
As you can see, the temperature was 50 degrees Celsius.
It's very hot!
To design each part to perform without failure,
we need to consider each of them carefully.
Often, we add ducts, fans, vents, heaters,
and cleaning and air nozzles to them.
This process can only be done by radical collaboration
between design and engineering.
It's not easy to design such a complex system
for all weather conditions,
but it's one of the most important aspects of functionality,
especially for this fifth generation,
which is built to help us scale
across a diverse set of locations.
Using design to optimize performance doesn't stop
at the design of the hardware itself.
We also need to find the best colors, materials,
and finishes for each part.
Since our vehicles will be used for ride hailing,
the interior materials should be more durable
and cleanable than personal cars.
The exterior part finishes need to work for all weather
and the sensors and housings should be water
and dust resistant, optically acceptable,
and meet thermal requirement.
After various testing,
we can spec the materials and finishes.
A lot goes into optimizing
our current technology's performance,
but we also want to make sure we are designing a system
that has room to evolve as our technology does.
To do this, we've made hardware modules
usable for several different locations,
prioritized simple and pure forms
to integrate them harmoniously,
and designed for efficient packaging.
We've done this across each of our sensors.
As you see here, we've placed our perimeter lidar
in four different places around the vehicle.
We've dones the same with our vision system.
And with our radar, the simple geometric shape
enabled multi-use of the module.
For the I-PACE, we have six identical radar modules
for six different locations.
The next area we focus a lot of time on
is designing our Driver with the Waymo look and feel,
and applying Waymo's design language to our hardware
and enclosure design.
This gives us a consistent look and feel,
and cohesive branding across platforms and products,
and portrays us as a technology company
as opposed to a car company.
Since we are building the Driver
as a separate design element from the car,
we want to celebrate our sensors distinctly
from the vehicle platform,
and embrace Waymo's own design language.
We tried to find a way to show Waymo's branding
through our design details.
It can be the form of the design,
the application of logos and wordmarks,
or just simple accent colors.
You can see this in the way we've designed our roof pod.
It has a simple shape, an accent color,
and our wordmarks.
In the dome, we can also display the Waymo logo
to help identify that the vehicle is powered
by the Waymo Driver.
We've also branded our individual sensors
on the front, sides, and rear,
again with coloring and wordmarks.
We embrace our own Waymo branding
and want our Driver to look and feel distinct
from the base vehicle so that no matter the platform,
you can recognize it as the Waymo Driver.
This feeds into our next design goal
of ensuring that our Driver can be adapted
across multiple OEM platforms, not just custom-made for one.
Whether it's a mini-van or SUV on the passenger side,
or a van, or a semi-truck on the commercial goods side,
the Waymo Driver can be applied to many different platforms
with many different requirements.
These platforms also serve a variety of use cases,
from ride hailing, to local delivery, to long-haul trucking.
In order to build comfort and trust
among our various users, we work to build
a cohesive brand identity for the Waymo Driver
and establish consistency and similarity across each.
We adapt our Driver to these various platforms
through a collaborative process that looks like this.
The base vehicle platforms are prepped
for the self-driving system by the OEMs.
They ensure the vehicles are compatible
for the Waymo Drive and add things like cutouts
and mountings for our hardware,
and for software features such as braking and steering.
Then our hardware is designed
and applied to the vehicle, and tested, and validated.
That process is the same
for all of the platforms we work with.
Here is what they look like in their original form.
And this is what they look like with the Waymo Driver.
Finally, although the Waymo Driver requires
a highly complex tech-driven design approach,
we can't forget that it is planned for,
and used by people, so we embrace and prioritize
a human-centered approach.
We've added moving LEDs to our dome,
so that it can also act as a mechanism
for riders to identify the vehicle day and night,
and recognize which vehicle is theirs
when there may be more than one Waymo car waiting.
Another way we've made our high tech product
human centered in our latest system
is how we've packaged our compute.
Our engineering team successfully reduced the volume
of our even more powerful compute under the trunk,
so that passengers will be able to use
the trunk space, which wasn't available
in our previous platform.
Riders will be able to use it to transport groceries,
luggage, folding wheelchairs,
golf clubs, and everything in between.
This is one of the accomplishments
we are really proud of that not only showcases
the close collaboration between our design
and engineering teams, but also the importance
of keeping the end user in mind as we develop our products.
Now after years of development
and careful design consideration,
our fifth-generation Driver is test driving
on public roads in the Bay Area
and will eventually be rolled out into our Waymo One fleet.
Wow! We've taken a long journey together today.
We've looked at Waymo and our history,
how our design has evolved over the last 10 years,
and our latest Waymo Driver.
But what's next for us and our design team?
Our Waymo Driver will continue to power
our many different commercial applications.
Whether that's moving people through our ride hailing
service Waymo One, moving goods through Waymo Via,
or helping advance other industrial use cases
with our Laser Bear Honeycomb lidar,
this technology can help accelerate
a wide array of products now and in the future.
(bright music)
- [Woman] Say hello to Waymo,
the world's most experienced Driver.
The Waymo Driver is what we call
our self-driving technology.
It has over a decade of real world experience
and has driven millions of miles.
With Waymo One, we can make it safer and easier
for you to get around,
so you can spend more time doing what you love.
(child laughs)
And with Waymo Via, the same Driver
with the same deep experience can also deliver your packages
or save you a trip to the dry cleaners.
Or if you run a business, Waymo Via can help you transport
whatever you need, making sure shipments
arrive right when they're supposed to.
This is the Waymo Driver,
a driver that's re-imagining transportation for all of us.
- [YooJung Ahn] Thank you so much for your time today.
Hopefully it helped provide more information
on Waymo and how we design our Waymo Driver.
For any designers listening,
we are growing our awesome team here,
so go check out waymo.com/joinus to see our open positions.
And if you have any questions on our design process
and what we talked about here today,
head to Waymo's Instagram profile to submit yours.
I will be answering some of them later this week.
Thanks so much.