What do you know about self-driving cars?
What do you know about Waymo?
Self-driving cars have a variety of sensors to perceive their surrounding and identify possible routes.
They proceed safely on the road without human intervention. Waymo is a subsidiary of Alphabet that
develops self-driving autonomous cars. It operates a self-driving taxi service in Phoenix. They have
operations nationwide that are involved in the development of software that used by car
manufacturers like Volvo, Daimler AG, Nissan-Renault, Jaguar Land Rover.
What is the biggest issue or challenge that Waymo or other self-driving car company is facing right
now?
The software is not able to sense objects in harsh weather conditions or when there is poor visibility.
The system can learn in a safe way how to drive on new roads or detect objects it has not come across
before.
How do you deal with ambiguity?
I take the initiative to learn on my own through observation and experimentation. I use the trial-and-
error approach to test the different approaches to solve a problem. Even if the outcome is not
accurate, I go back through each step and figure out what caused it. I do my own homework to
understand an assignment.
If there are changes that need to be made to our initial plan, I will consult with other team members.
The interviewer will ask about details your background, give two open-ended questions regarding city
planning, ask how you work in a team environment, and also ask about a challenge that you have
faced in the past and how you overcame it. There will mostly be analytical and scenario-based
questions.
If a car is traveling 15 mps (meters per second) and needs to stop within 50m how much brake force is
required? (Where is the weight of the car provided)
L-car(left lane) is traveling 25 m/s. R-car(right lane) is traveling 15 m/s. L-car is 300 meter behind the
R-car. After 30 seconds can L-car pass the R-car? Yes/No
No, the left car will not pass the car on the right since both cars will be at the same place with car left
traveled 750m from its starting point while car on right traveled 450m from its starting point.
What is QA? What are the QA processes that a QA Analyst follows?
QA represents quality assurance that reduces the number of defects in manufacturing products and
shipping to clients. The process consists of a requirements analysis, test planning, test design, test
execution and defect reporting, retesting, release testing.
They may also have a question about sensors, symbols, sounds, and walkways for pedestrians as well
as show you two intersections and ask what the differences are.
Math question: On a 40 miles * 10 mile rectangle, A move left 5 miles per hour, B move right 7 miles
per hour, they all start at center of the top side of the rectangle, where their distance to the upper left
corner would be 20 miles. They have a phone on their hands, which would only work in range of 30
miles. How long would they no longer hear from each other? After 6 hours, could they hear each
other? Hint: they might be able to cut corners.
After 2.5 hours they will no longer hear from each other since they will be beyond the range for their
phones to work. A would have traveled 12.5 miles to the left and B would have traveled 17.5 miles to
the right they are exactly 30 miles apart.
They might ask you to list various traffic scenarios that a self-driving car might have problems with.
They might ask you to design an intersection with classes and subclasses to include all the possibilities
that can be encountered at an intersection.
“You’re driving down a residential road and a child decides to run out into the road. What sort of
factors need to be accounted for in this situation?”
Add sensor in the car so it can pick up on the sound of a person’s footsteps or a moving object in case
the car can’t see the object.
“You’re at a 4-way intersection with stops signs with 1 lane traffic in all directions. How would you set
up a scenario and what needs to be accounted for to navigate this intersection safely?
If there is a car that is already in the intersection the self-driving car should yield for that car to pass.
“2 cars are driving in the same directions. One is traveling 15 m/s and the other 25 m/s and is 300m
behind the slower car. After 30 seconds, will the faster car have passed the slower car?
No, they will be at the same location as car 1 would have traveled 450m and car 2 would have
traveled 750 m from the starting point.
“If 1629 digits were used for paging a book, how many pages re in this book?”
There are 579 pages.
Set up a scenario where a car is driving and there is a child on the sidewalk. The child just stays on the
sidewalk, not on the road. What should you do? Or what do you need to do?
The car should just stop momentarily and then it can proceed if no one has entered the crosswalk.
However, if they enter the sidewalk the car should stop in place.
Trick question about an algorithm: Imagine that I give you a bag with millions of random numbers
inside. How can you find the number that I ask of you?
The user can enter in the range of numbers that the number is in.
They may also ask about the physics behind acceleration and deceleration as well as traffic rules.
There may be some questions where they ask you to describe your background as well as your
thought process/how you solve problems.
“What could be the reason an autonomous car would stop on the street?”
If there is a software malfunction or software crash. Hardware parts such as tires, gas energy and
computer could stop because battery failed. Planned stopping along a route to pickup passengers or
drop off passengers or if there is an obstruction in front of the car.
“If you have 36 horses and you can run 6 at a time, how do you figure out which one is the fastest
without the help of a stop watch?”
I will first let the horses run to the finish line and see which one first reaches the finish line. Then I will
run the fastest horses from each group to see the which one is the fastest of them.
“A snail climbing up a 30 ft wall. Every 1 hour he climbs 3 ft but he falls 2ft at the top of the hour.
How many hours will he need to climb the complete wall?”
After every hour he would have only climbed 1 foot after falling back 2 feet. It will take him 30 hours
to climb up the complete wall since (30 / 1= 30).
How do you adapt to new software? What types of software do you have experience with?
I am open to learn the new software and will put in time to explore features of it. Read through the
user manual to understand how to work in it. I have worked with many software applications
including PuTTY, FileZilla, Visual Studio, NetBeans-IDE, Brackets, Bitnami WAMP Stack, Citrix
Workspace, Wireshark, SonicWall VPN.
Also some more general questions: tell me about yourself, what do you think this position is about
(they will likely emphasize that this position does not involve any coding), describe why you think you
would be a good fit for this position, elaborate on a previous project/previous experience that is listed
on your resume, tell me about a time you had a challenge (academic/professional) and how you
overcame it, what do you look for in a team
Tell me about yourself.
I recently finished my degree in technical management with a concentration in CIS. I have an interest
to work with technology that involves machine learning.
What do you look for in a team? Everyone should be communicating with each other. Everyone is
responsible for their duties.
“If a ball rolled onto a street and a child were to run after it, how do you think a regular driver in a
regular car would respond? What about if there was no visibility?”
In normal situation, the driver would slow down and yield until the child has crossed with the ball.
There will be a beeping sound to signal something is in front of the vehicle or if it has a motion
detector to sense something is moving.
“What scenarios would you design to test a self-driving car's reaction to a child running after a ball
that rolled onto the street?”
“If the car is going at 20 m/s and needs to stop at a distance of 40 m, what acceleration is needed?
(They provide the physics equation needed for this problem: vf^2 = vi^2 + 2ad)”
What are the benefits of a person driving vs. a self-driving car. What would a person do differently in
specific scenarios?
“You have a closed 4 way 2 lane intersection. What scenarios would you use to test a self-driving
vehicle?”
Place orange bins or a sign states “Road Work Ahead” that should indicate an activity in progress. A
GPS can inform the self-driving car about areas where there is construction activity and have it find a
different route it can take to its destination.
Why would you want to create a simulation instead of testing in real life?
A simulation is an efficient way to test a vehicle under various conditions. Scenarios with basic to
extreme conditions are created and executed quickly that cannot be done when live testing.
Pretend that you are the DMV and you have to create a class and subclass of various traffic scenarios.
How would you do it?
“A car first has zero velocity and then accelerates for 3m/s for 6s, then goes back -6m/s. What does
the negative -6m/s mean?”
The car starts moving in the opposite direction or is backing up.
There may be a ranking question about ranking things by how quickly they could stop between
people, a bike, a car, a motorcycle and a truck
#1 The bike; #2 The motorcycle; #3 The car, #4 The truck
May show pictures and ask questions about how a person driving the car would respond and how the
self-driving car would respond in the same situation on the road
Draw a graph with time on X axis and acceleration (speed) on Y axis. At different times, speed of the
car changes so when would the passengers feel uncomfortable based on looking at the graph
When the car is acceleration increases but starts falling when the brakes are applied resulting in a jerk
motion.
