Waymo says it built a better benchmark for comparing robotaxis to humans
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Waymo's new benchmark for robotaxi safety is technically deep and relevant to AI/ML.
Summary
Waymo and TU Delft developed the Reference Driver, a computer model using active inference to simulate human driving behavior in crash scenarios, published in Nature Communications. Unlike prior models that only replicated last-second reactive maneuvers, this model reproduces pre-crash behavior and internal driver 'surprise,' enabling more accurate benchmarking of autonomous systems. Waymo open-sourced the research code under an academic non-commercial license for further collaboration.