Yandex Shows Fully Driverless Robotaxi Ride Through Four Moscow Districts

Yandex published a video of the first fully autonomous robotaxi ride based on the Hyundai Sonata through four Moscow districts: Ochakovo-Matveevskoye, Khamovniki, Yasenevo, and Maryino. The video was recorded in one continuous stream without editing or splicing to show real driving conditions. Arslan Urtashev, head of Yandex's autonomous car and truck division, noted that Moscow districts differ significantly in traffic organization, density, and road conditions, so the system was trained not only on regular trips but also on rare situations such as road narrowing due to repairs or unexpected pedestrians. Yandex uses high-precision HD maps, simulations of millions of road situations, and data from real trips to train the robotaxi. The model is fine-tuned on complex episodes where several parallel trained models diverge in assessing a situation, and collected data improves the system for the entire fleet. Yandex has been developing autonomous vehicles since 2017, with first tests in 2018 in Innopolis. The company announced plans to launch robotaxis in Moscow in September 2021, when Russia's federal law on experimental legal regimes in digital innovation partially lifted restrictions on testing autonomous transport.