Self-Driving Cars Get Help from Humans Miles Away
Zoox's self-driving cars depend on remote technicians for navigation, raising safety concerns and questioning the cost-effectiveness of robot taxis compared to traditional services, despite innovative vehicle designs being tested.
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Self-driving cars, such as those operated by Zoox, a company owned by Amazon, are increasingly navigating urban environments without human drivers. However, these vehicles often require remote assistance from technicians located hundreds of miles away, particularly in complex situations like construction zones or emergency scenes. This reliance on human intervention has been downplayed by companies to maintain the perception of full autonomy, which has attracted significant investment. Technicians monitor the cars through video feeds and graphical interfaces, providing real-time guidance when the vehicles encounter challenges they cannot handle independently. Despite advancements, self-driving cars still struggle with unexpected scenarios, leading to incidents where they fail to respond appropriately, such as not yielding to emergency vehicles. The operational model of remote assistance raises questions about the cost-effectiveness of robot taxis compared to traditional ride-hailing services. Zoox is testing a unique vehicle design that eliminates the need for a driver’s seat or steering wheel, aiming for a more efficient passenger experience. While the company plans to launch its service to the public soon, the ongoing need for human oversight highlights the current limitations of autonomous technology.
- Zoox's self-driving cars rely on remote technicians for navigation assistance.
- Companies have historically downplayed the need for human intervention to promote the idea of full autonomy.
- Self-driving vehicles struggle with unexpected situations, leading to safety concerns.
- The cost of remote assistance may hinder the competitiveness of robot taxis against traditional ride-hailing services.
- Zoox is testing a new vehicle design that does not include a driver's seat or steering wheel.
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6 commentsRobots (actual industrial 6-axis robots, not T-800s), PLCs, and computers are surprisingly dumb, but they're dumb reliably, tirelessly, and very fast. Human operators and technicians, in comparisons, are paragons of unimaginable wisdom, but they are slow to react and occasionally make mistakes.
The magic happens when you bring them together correctly.
A human cannot respond in milliseconds under optimal conditions, under poor conditions (such as being fatigued and stressed by hours of unrelenting demand on their attention) they might take seconds to respond. It's possible but you don't really want to relegate basic tasks like lane centering and speed regulation to their subconscious, because they're likely to make mistakes. Computers can do a 1ms PID loop all day.
On the other hand, even with all the massive advancements being made by LLMs these days, a 4-year-old can better understand the gestures and commands from a traffic cop than software that would take a team of engineers and high-speed LIDAR sensors thousands of hours to interpret with a useless 95% accuracy rate.
Let humans do human things and machines do machine things. We don't ask humans to manage fuel mixtures or double-clutching a manual transmission anymore, because the machines can do that better. We shouldn't ask the machines to interpret emergency signage in the future, because humans can do that better.
The optimal level of automation is probably past analog cruise control that's been around for decades and simple suspension caster angles that bias the wheels to keep straight, probably even beyond level 2 radar distance-keeping cruise with automatic emergency braking and automated lane centering, but may never be "punch in an address" automated.
One could see non-removable way points being set in software. Door and window controls locked out. Radio tuned to the most obnoxious playlist possible.
There are numerous ways a malicious interaction could play out, none of which requires 'remote drive' capability.
These are immediate, in the moment, examples with no forethought or planning. Imagine how interesting an actual attacker could make a malicious interaction, or millions of those interactions.
I've seen this be used to good effect in other places, but here it really got in the way IMHO.
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