Waymo and Waze announced a pilot program to collect pothole location data and share it with cities. The data, which is already collected by Waymo, will be uploaded to the free Waze For Cities platform. Cities can then download the data into their own systems.
The program has identified around 500 potholes across multiple cities, according to a release by Waymo.
Arielle Fleisher, a spokesperson for Waymo, said the program is to help cities identify and repair potholes faster.
“Potholes are a really tough challenge for cities, and they've created a lot of tools to deal with them, but it's something that they've been interested in,” Fleisher said. “So over the last, you know, I think year or so, we put our heads down and figured out, ‘OK, how can we make this possible?’”
Fleisher said the vehicle detects potholes using physical feedback.
“We really log that dip,” Fleisher said. “We feel the vibrations and it's that dip, it's those vibrations that we log in our system to identify something as a pothole.”
Fleisher said users of the Waze app can see pothole warnings when they drive and can confirm if they are there. The program only shares location data, not the size, shape or depth of the pothole.
Phoenix is one of the first five metro areas included in the program.
The city of Phoenix says it is aware of the program, but it already has its own vehicle called an automated road analyzer to detect road conditions.
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