Ask any self-respecting person working in the field of artificial intelligence and they'll tell you self-driving cars still have a long way to go. That doesn't mean progress isn't being made, though, with the latest breakthrough from self-driving tech company Waymo being the ability to deal with traffic cops.
If the lights fail at a junction a traffic cop can be called in to ensure traffic keeps flowing while they are fixed. Such a situation would surely confuse a self-driving car system because it only understands lights at a junction. As CNET reports, Waymo decided to fix this by teaching its driving AI how to recognize and properly react to a traffic cop and the hand gestures they make that act as instructions.
As you can see in the video above, the Waymo self-driving system recognizes the traffic cop, comes to a stop, and them waits for the appropriate signal before driving on. The fact this works at all is impressive, but you also then realize no self-driving car can be allowed to function without a driver behind the wheel if this traffic cop recognition is missing. At some junctions around the world the traffic cop can be a permanent feature!
One other impressive feat Waymo's AI has achieved is the distance between disengagements. Whenever the self-driving system on a car requires a human driver to take control it is called a disengagement. Waymo's system is so mature and experienced now, it can travel 11,000 miles before a disengagement happens, and that distance is surely only set to grow.