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Waymo Co-CEO Explains How the Robotaxi Company Prepares for Unexpected Road Scenarios

November 5, 2026 at 10:00 EST

Robotics

Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said the self-driving car company trains its systems for situations it has never encountered, and described how it responds when the real world presents an unexpected challenge.

Waymo · Interview with Bloomberg

Training robotaxis for what they have never seen

Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana says the company trains its self-driving systems for situations they have never encountered, and explains how it responds when the real world throws up an unexpected challenge.

How the gap is closed: a continuous loop

A common approach across autonomous driving, shown as a flow. Waymo's specific methods were not detailed.

Step 1

Road driving

Large-scale data from real-world operation.

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Step 2

Simulation

Rare and unseen scenarios tested virtually.

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Step 3

Software update

The system improves its handling of the gap.

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Step 4

Back on the road

New conditions feed fresh data into the loop.

The core challenge

Rare events are hard to capture in advance through ordinary driving.

Edge cases: a long tail of uncommon situations that robotaxis must still handle safely.
Reliability: how a system adapts to novel conditions is a central test as operations expand.
Open questions: details on Waymo's methods and new deployments were not available at the time of writing.

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