Waabi says its virtual robotrucks are realistic enough to prove the real ones are safe

“It brings accountability to the industry,” says Raquel Urtasun, Waabi’s firebrand founder and CEO (who is also a professor at the University of Toronto). “There are no more excuses.” After quitting Uber, where she led the ride-sharing firm’s driverless-car division, Urtasun founded Waabi in 2021 with a different vision for how autonomous vehicles should be made. The firm, which has partnerships with Uber Freight and Volvo, has been running real trucks on real roads in Texas since 2023, but it carries out the majority of its development inside a simulation called Waabi World. Waabi is now taking its sim-first approach to the next level, using Waabi World not only to train and test its driving models but to prove their real-world safety. For now, Waabi’s trucks drive with a human in the cab. But the company plans to go human-free later this year. To do that, it needs to demonstrate the safety of its system to regulators. “These trucks are 80,000 pounds,” says Urtasun. “They’re really ... Read full article.