The Waymo World Model is a world model (artificial intelligence) developed and used by Waymo for simulating edge cases for Waymo's self-driving cars. It is based on Genie 3. The edge case scenarios are not commonly encountered in real life, and include situations such as sudden tornadoes, elephant encounters, and snow on the Golden Gate Bridge.
It was adopted in February 2026, and aided in the introduction of self-driving cars to 11 cities in the United States.
It is designed to be realistic, and outputs lidar at four times the speed of Genie. It converts videos recorded with a dashcam or phone into simulations.
History
editCapabilities and usage
editThe Waymo World Model is designed to be realistic, and outputs lidar at four times the speed of Genie.[1] It converts videos recorded with a dashcam or phone into simulations.[5] It is used for simulating edge cases for Waymo's self-driving cars, which are not commonly encountered in real life, including situations such as sudden tornadoes, elephant encounters, and snow on the Golden Gate Bridge.[1][2]
The Waymo World Model has three types of simulation controls, being driving action control, scene layout control, and language control. Driving action control controls how it responds to inputs, scene layout control controls the generated scenario, and language control controls environmental conditions.[6][7]
See also
editReferences
edit- 1 2 3 Martindale, Jon (February 6, 2026). "Waymo Is Using Google's Genie 3 AI to Practice Handling Tornadoes, Elephants". PCMag. Retrieved April 6, 2026.
- 1 2 Whitwam, Ryan (February 7, 2026). "Waymo leverages Genie 3 to create a world model for self-driving cars". Ars Technica. Retrieved April 14, 2026.
- ↑ Bastian, Matthias (February 6, 2026). "Waymo taps Google Deepmind's Genie 3 to simulate driving scenarios its cars have never seen". The Decoder. Archived from the original on February 7, 2026. Retrieved April 15, 2026.
- ↑ Bellan, Rebecca (May 19, 2026). "Google's Genie world model can now simulate real streets with Street View". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on May 19, 2026. Retrieved May 26, 2026.
- ↑ Burnett, Steward (February 9, 2026). "Waymo unveils DeepMind-powered world simulation model". Automotive World. Archived from the original on February 10, 2026. Retrieved April 15, 2026.
- ↑ Sprigg, Sam (February 12, 2026). "Waymo Launches Generative 3D World Model to Train Self-Driving Cars". Auganix. Archived from the original on April 15, 2026. Retrieved April 15, 2026.
- ↑ Hawkins, Andrew (February 6, 2026). "What happens when Waymo runs into a tornado? Or an elephant?". The Verge. Retrieved April 15, 2026.