FREMONT, Calif.—Self-driving startups like Cruise have begun testing their driverless cars in some parts of California in the past year, with an additional feature: Human operators.
Cruise majority-owned by General Motors Co, started operating five driverless vehicles in San Francisco at night in October 2020 with a human in the front seat. The minder has “the ability to stop the vehicle at any point during the ride,” a Cruise spokesman said.
“Cruise views the development of self-driving vehicles as not only a tech race, but also a trust race,” the spokesman added. “Given that, we keep humans in the loop in testing driverless vehicles not only as a means of safe development, but also, beyond that, in order to build trust with the public.”
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The continued human presence in what are supposed to be software-driven, automated vehicles underscores the challenges facing the automated vehicle industry, which has consumed billions of dollars in investor capital over the past decade.With no end in sight to the technical and regulatory obstacles to free-range, driverless robotaxis, some self-driving companies are accepting the need for human minders and scaling down their ambitions so they can start generating revenue in the near future, according to interviews with investors and startup executives.
Waymo’s Roadside Assistance
Waymo has been developing self-driving technology for more than a decade, and launched the first commercial robotaxis in Phoenix in 2018. But the successor to the pioneering Google self-driving car project still keeps humans in the loop.Waymo told Reuters it runs four teams monitoring and assisting the fleet. Duties range from responding to riders’ questions to providing, remotely, a “second pair of eyes” in tricky situations such as road closures. One of its teams provides roadside assistance to respond to collisions and other incidents.
The teams “work together to orchestrate the operation of our fully autonomous fleet throughout the day,” Nathaniel Fairfield, a software engineer at Waymo, said in a statement to Reuters.
Waymo does not operate vehicles by remote control, he said.
“We don’t use remote takeover, or ‘joysticking,’ because we don’t think remote humans actually add safety,” he said, citing potential wireless connection problems.
Waymo now plans to start commercial autonomous vehicle operations in San Francisco with safety drivers initially. The company relies on an army of vehicle operators to ramp up testing in the dense and complex city environment.
A former Waymo operator who participated in San Francisco testing this year said he had to “disengage” and intervene roughly 30 times a day in cases including the car failing to stop fast enough for red lights or vehicles in front that abruptly slow down or stop.
Dirty Little Secret
Regulators are also keeping humans involved with automated vehicles. California laws “call for a two-way communication link that allows the manufacturer to continuously monitor the (driverless) vehicle’s location/status,” the California Department of Motor Vehicles said in a statement to Reuters.Other robotaxi companies are using remote operations as a way to get vehicles on the road.
In Las Vegas, startup Halo allows customers to summon a driverless car, which is driven by a remote human operator over fast, fifth-generation wireless networks operated by T-Mobile US Inc.
“Just a few years back, remote human assistance was a dirty little secret in this space,” said Elliot Katz, co-founder of teleoperation firm Phantom Auto. “Virtually no one talked about it publicly because there was still this facade that these vehicles were just going to be able to drive autonomously, everywhere they need to go and do everything that a human driver would do.”
He added: “Everyone now knows that’s not going to be the case.”
