Waymo, an Autonomous vehicle developer, offered a peek inside the daily testing of their self-driving truck. A Peek into Waymo's Self-Driving Truck Testing was done through a virtual ride-along for the members of the press. An autonomous truck fitted with Waymo's automated driving system; drove itself in Phoenix near Waymo's operation center.

The truck performed all functions including, lane changing and merging, while negotiating moderate traffic. The traffic comprised of many different vehicles on Interstate 10 and Arizona Route 202. The truck had a driver behind the wheel for safety purposes, alongside an engineer, who monitored the systems operations.

Pablo Abad acknowledged that the company is continually improving the autonomous system. Brad Neuman stated that the truck slowed down safely when other vehicles abruptly switched lanes ahead of it. The trucking program is actively tested and developed to achieve full autonomy in the future. There would be no need for a ride-along driver when fully autonomous.

Waymo is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. It started its self-driving truck program in 2017. Waymo also allowed those present to see the fifth generation version of their system, fitted on one of their class 8 trucks. The new version has a higher-resolution lidar. Therefore, it creates 3D images of the vehicle's surroundings and has sensor cameras to detect objects 500 meters away. Also, it has improved computing capabilities and can deal with cold and hot weather conditions.

Neuman added that the enhancements come at a lower cost and would help in the production sector. Waymo has partnered with Daimler Trucks to co-develop a custom Freightliner Cascadia that would run using the Waymo Driver. The necessary sensors and other components will be fitted to make the trucks fully autonomous.