Who does a driverless car call when it needs help? A Human
According to the Wall St Journal:
"Some Phoenix-area residents have been hailing rides in
minivans with no driversand no human safety operators inside. But that doesn’t mean they’re on their own if trouble arises.
From a command center, employees at
Alphabet Inc.’s
Waymo driverless-car unit monitor the test vehicles on computer screens, able to wirelessly peer in through the minivan’s cameras. If the robot brain maneuvering the vehicle gets confused by a situation—say, a car unexpectedly stalled in front of it or closed lanes of traffic—it will stop the vehicle and ask the command center to verify what it is seeing. If the human confirms the situation, the robot will calculate how it should navigate around the hazard.
Computers may be poised to take control of driving in the future, but humans will be backing them for some time yet. Tech giants Waymo and Uber Technologies Inc., auto makers
General Motors Co. and
Nissan MotorCo., and upstarts like Phantom Auto are all developing ways for people to remotely assist their autonomous vehicles during complicated driving situations.
“You’re going to want as many different backup systems as possible, and human beings performing remote operations is one of those,” said Anthony Foxx, former U.S. Transportation Secretary and adviser to venture-capital firm Autotech Ventures. Having human backup will likely help alleviate concerns that regulators and insurance companies have about the new technology, he added.
Driverless cars, using sensors, cameras and digital maps, tend to navigate the world based on road markings and rules of the road. A police officer with a flag waving traffic around a crash, for example, could be confusing to the system, resulting in the vehicle stopped.
Testing of self-driving vehicles on public roads underscores that even the most established autonomous-vehicle systems still require humans to take the wheel in such instances, or when there is a perceived safety threat. According to California state records, human operators of Waymo test vehicles took control 0.8 times for every 1,000 miles driven. Most companies had significantly more takeovers.
In April, California adopted new testing rules for driverless cars that no longer demand a
human safety operator be behind the wheel, but they do require a person to remotely monitor the car and communicate with riders. The provision also says the remote operator may have the ability to control the driving task.
Waymo and GM’s
Cruise Automation say their remote operators use two-way cellular connections to convey messages to cars. The vehicles seek help from a safe location, such as when stopped, then ping the operator for help to confirm a situation and, if still confused, that person can then plot out a suggested alternative path to avoid the obstacle, according to the companies. The robot won’t proceed if it doesn’t think the path is clear and, in theory, the computer brain will learn how to handle similar situations in the future, the companies say."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-does-a-driverless-car-call-when-it-needs-help-a-human-1528191000
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