Waymo Alphabet employee reveals how self-driving cars are tested

Stephanie Villegas at Castle.
Waymo

• Stephanie Villegas is a Googler who studied art before
  going to work for the Google Car project, now Waymo.
• She located unused real estate at a former US Air Force
  base in California to transform it into a massive proving
  ground for Waymo self-driving vehicles.
• Castle is now a 91-acre site that Waymo uses to throw
  everything its engineers can think of to challenge Waymo’s
  self-driving cars.

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Editor’s note: Business Insider had the chance to speak with two
Waymo employees from different parts of the company to learn more
about their work. What we discovered were some of the coolest
jobs at Alphabet, Waymo’s parent company. This is the first in
the series.

Stephanie Villegas was taking a break at Google’s campus
when a weird-looking Toyota changed everything.

“I was in one of Google’s famous micro-kitchens when a
Prius with a spinning bucket on top pulled up outside,” she
recalls.

It was 2009, and what we now know as Waymo, formerly the
self-driving Google Car project had just been started. “It was
still pretty confidential,” Villegas. In fact, it was so
confidential that it even had a code name: “Chauffeur.”

At the time, Villegas was working on what she
described as an “indoor mapping” project for Google’s X lab. But
the goofy looking Prius would soon out the University of
California, Berkeley fine-art graduate on a completely different
and unexpected path.

It all began with a ride. 

Villegas went to check out the Prius, which was headed
toward an autocross course. The operator of the car said they
needed “ballast” in the back seat. So she jumped in.

After a few minutes of what she described as “ripping
around corners,” her mind was made up. “If you guys are hiring,”
she said, “let me know.”

The wrinkle was that Google Car drivers had to try out.
“Challenge accepted!” Villegas said, and by 2011, she was an
operations driver. At Berkeley, she had studied painting, and
after graduating had worked in a gallery, then later at a trading
firm and a clothing boutique — hardly an atypical early career
meander for a young person who didn’t pursue engineering.

But also proof that even at an engineer’s paradise
such as Google, the company makes room for people who can bring
something outside the box to the 19-year-old tech colossus.
For Villegas, the company now called Alphabet created the
opportunity to work on a much bigger canvas than she could have
imagined.

How Google found its Castle in California’s Central
Valley

Action at Castle.
Waymo

The googlers on the self-driving car project had been
improvising. According to Villegas, they spent about six
months running scenario tests in the Google parking lot, and they
used the nearby Shoreline Amphitheater lot when it was
quiet.

Villegas described the opposite of a command-and-control
management system. When the team decided to explore situations
that might come up on public roads, she ordered some supplies
from Amazon. Then the Google Car vehicle began to deal with the
more mundane aspects of everyday driving.

If the car knocked over a trash can, the engineers got
excited, Villegas recalled. “They’d say, ‘This is
awesome!'”

But the project was rapidly outgrowing the Shoreline
Amphitheater, which was also spoken for when concert season
arrived in the spring. So Villegas went on a hunt for real
estate. 

She found it at decommissioned US Air Force base in Merced
County, 130 miles east of the Googleplex in California’s vast
Central Valley. 

Castle AFB had been closed for over a decade
when Villegas got a look at its 50 acres and dilapidated,
leftover roadways. The Cold War ruin had a new lease on
life.

In 2018, it’s called Castle, and the Google Car project is
called Waymo. As Waymo — which Morgan Stanley recently valued as
a $175 billion company —  prepares to launch commercially
later this year, the site has grown to 91 acres. 

Villegas is a Structured Testing Lead, spending her days
designing inventive ways to stress out what Waymo calls its
“driver,” an orchestration of laser-radars, sensors, computers,
and software that’s racked up over eight million miles of
autonomous operation in Waymo’s decade of existence.

Villegas has access to all the powerful, high-tech
resources Waymo can provide, but science fiction hasn’t always
been her modus operandi. 

“When we expanded, it was a field of dirt,” she said. “But
we wanted a little neighborhood with a cul de sac and railroad
tracks. I talked to civil engineers to see if it was possible. It
was basically me with a pencil and a piece of paper.”

How Castle helped Waymo become a $175-billion company

We’re gonna need some more roads.
Waymo

Villegas’ working life now consists of fine-tuning her
creation. In the beginning, Castle was rough — intentionally.
Google left the potholes to test the durability of self-driving
platform, such as the adorable Firefly podmobile. Roads weren’t
repaved and lines weren’t repainted so that the pavement more
closely resembled America’s infamously beleaguered real-world
infrastructure.

Comforts have crept in, however.

“We have an office there, as well as a local team, and all
the test associates are from the area so they don’t have to
commute,” Villegas said. “And we don’t have to stand out in
the Central Valley heat all day.”

Although Villegas spent much of her time at Castle
“back in the day,” as she puts its, her average week finds her at
the facility less frequently. Waymo biggest current challenge is
adapting the various dynamics of the different vehicles the
company has partnered with automakers — Fiat Chrysler, Jaguar —
to use. 

Waymo’s CEO John Krafcik also isn’t limiting the company’s
expansion to passenger cars. A logistics business means semi
trucks. For that, Villegas said, the old Air Force base’s
taxiway comes in handy.

Villegas clearly pinches herself from time to time. That
spinning-bucket Prius could be worth more than three General
Motors. “The most thrilling thing was the day I rode in
the vehicle on non-public roads with no one in he driver’s seat,”
she said.

“People were looking at the car in disbelief.”