> HD Mapping is great when it's accurate and available. But it requires a ton of data and constant updating, or the car will get "lost," and realistically will never be implemented in general, at best in certain cities.
Waymo have said time and again they don’t rely on maps being 100% accurate to be able to drive. It's one of the key assumptions of the system. They use it as prior knowledge to aid in decision making. If they got "lost" whenever there was a road change, they wouldn't be successfully navigating construction zones in San Francisco as we've seen in many videos.
Waymo have said time and again they don’t rely on maps being 100% accurate to be able to drive. It's one of the key assumptions of the system. They use it as prior knowledge to aid in decision making. If they got "lost" whenever there was a road change, they wouldn't be successfully navigating construction zones in San Francisco as we've seen in many videos.
They can also do constant updates because the cars themselves are able to detect road changes, self update maps and rollout changes to the entire fleet. See https://waymo.com/blog/2020/09/the-waymo-driver-handbook-map...
At this point, the whole “HD maps are not practical” is just a trope perpetuated by the Tesla community for years.