For years, developers have been working on ways for driverless cars to communicate intent to other road users, either through audio recordings or visual cues. Today, Waymo says it wants to be one of the first companies to put some of these methods into practice. The Alphabet-owned company’s driverless Jaguar I-Pace vehicles will use their roof domes, which are wrapped in LED displays, to communicate messages to other road users.
Uber took the maximalist approach, slapping flashing directional lights on the side-view mirrors, doors, roof dome, and basically anywhere there was a bit of free real estate on the vehicle. Drive.ai, a now-defunct AV startup, was more subtle in its approach, relying on LED signs that use text and emoji-like pictures to communicate.