Waymo LLC

Saksiri Tanphaichitr

Laurens Andreas Feenstra

Salil Pandit

Julien Charles Mercay

Dirk Haehnel

Peter Michal Pawlowski

David Yonchar Margines

Mishika Vora

Tacettin Dogacan Guney

Cristi Landy

Ben Qingzhou Wang

Jeffrey Min

Nirmal Jitendra Patel

Clement Wright

Donghyun Kim

Eric Friedman

Cameron Blume

Gaurav Agarwal

Aspects of the technology relate to providing service area maps for an autonomous vehicle transportation service having a fleet of vehicles. For instance, each vehicle of the fleet is associated with a polygon corresponding to a service area for that vehicle. A first location may be received from a client computing device, and a set of vehicles of the fleet of vehicles that are currently available to provide transportation services may be identified based on the first location. The polygons associated with each of the set of vehicles may be used to determine a first polygon having a geographic area. A first portion of map information corresponding to the geographic area of the first polygon may be identified, and the first portion may be provided to the client computing device for display to a user such that the portion represents a currently available service area for the user.

Service area maps for autonomous vehicles

Aspects of the disclosure relate to a method of managing a fleet of autonomous vehicles providing trip services. The method includes receiving information identifying an intermediate destination and a final destination for a trip. In this example, the intermediate destination is a destination where an autonomous vehicle will drop off and wait for a passenger in order to continue the trip, and the final destination is a destination where the trip ends. The method also includes determining an amount of waiting time the vehicle is likely to be waiting for the passenger at the intermediate destination, determining how a vehicle of the fleet of autonomous vehicles should spend the amount of waiting time, and sending an instruction to the vehicle, based on the determination of how the vehicle should spend the amount of waiting time.

Multiple destination trips for autonomous vehicles

An example method includes setting an initial pickup location. The method includes causing an autonomous vehicle to navigate towards the initial pickup location. The method includes periodically generating a plurality of candidate updated pickup locations. The method includes selecting a suggested pickup location from the plurality of candidate pickup locations that achieves a benchmark for reducing one or more of a time and a distance associated with the initial pickup location for one or more of the autonomous vehicle and the client device. The method includes determining that the suggested pickup location satisfies a set of pre-update checks for limiting a number of pickup location updates. The method includes responsive to (i) selecting the suggested pickup location, and (ii) determining that the suggested pickup location satisfies the set of pre-update checks, causing the autonomous vehicle to navigate to the suggested pickup location.

Systems and methods for updating pickup and dropoff locations for a vehicle

Aspects of the disclosure provide for advanced trip planning for an autonomous vehicle service. For instance, an example method may include determining a potential pickup location for a user, determining a set of potential destination locations for a user, and determining a set of potential trips. For each potential trip a vehicle of a fleet of autonomous vehicles of the service may be assigned and trip information, including an estimated time of arrival for the assigned vehicle of the potential trip to reach the destination location of the potential trip, may be determined. The trip information for each potential trip may be provided for display to the user. Thereafter, confirmation information identifying one of the set of potential trips may be received, and the assigned vehicle for one first of the set of potential trips may be dispatched to pick up the user.

Advanced trip planning for autonomous vehicle services

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Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Saksiri Tanphaichitr