Zoox, Amazon’s autonomous vehicle, is developing a small fleet of transformed test vehicles on the Los Angeles roads on Tuesday – a mediocre but meaningful step, as the company offers public walks in Las Vegas and San Francisco later.
The effort to collect data marks Zoox’s entry into its sixth city and lays the groundwork for a future robot service. Unlike the opponent Waymo, who already provides robot robotes in Los Angeles, Zoox is still in the early stages. This development will manually send Toyota Highlanders equipped with Zoox’s self-guiding technology to gather mapping data in front of wider autonomous tests in LA this summer.
Zoox is currently testing autonomous vehicles-so much the Highlander test fleet as well as its robbery manufactured for its purpose without steering wheel or pedal in various cities. Specifically, Zoox has expanded the areas where its designed robot is testing on public roads in Foster City, San Francisco and Las Vegas without a human driver. Zoox has recently allowed employees, media and other visitors to try the service.
The company also tests Austin, Miami and Seattle using Highlanders with human safety operators behind the steering wheel.
The expansion to California comes a few weeks after Zoox examined a voluntary software recall to 258 vehicles due to problems with the autonomous driving system unexpectedly hard braking.
Zoox’s entry into Los Angeles follows the launch of Waymo for a fully autonomous Robot Commercial Service in the city. To date, Waymo is the only AV company in the US to offer a paid service in various cities, including Bay, Phoenix and Austin. The alphabet company aims to launch a commercial service in Atlanta, Miami and Washington, DC in the next two years.
This article has been updated with more information than Zoox.
