Taking a trip in an autonomous taxi is an unsettling feeling of a future that is already here. However, even if the driver’s seat is empty, we now know that sometimes there is a person at the controls who is controlling it remotely. It happened recently with Waymo and now we have learned that Tesla does it too.
Self-employed, sometimes. They count in Futurism that Tesla has recognized (after being required by the US Senate) that it has human operators who can take complete control of the vehicle in certain situations. These operators are located at the headquarters in Austin, Texas, or Palo Alto, California.
Exceptional situations. As explained in the letter sent to the Senate, this is “As a security measure in exceptional cases (…) as a last resort once all other available intervention actions have been exhausted.” When this remote mode is activated, the operator cannot exceed 16 kilometers per hour. For example, it is used if the vehicle is stuck on a road.
Why is it important. Self-driving taxi companies like Waymo and, now, Tesla, have gone to great lengths to hide these types of remote interventions because it is a way of admitting that we are far from 100% autonomous driving. At the beginning of the year, Elon Musk boasted that their robotaxis were circulating without a safety monitor, but shortly after we learned that what they had really done was converting that safety monitor into a vehicle with a driver that followed each robotaxi.
The Waymo case. The leading robotaxis company in the US was the first to recognize human intervention in driving their cars. It also happened as a result of authorities’ scrutiny of its technology. However, unlike Tesla’s system in which the human takes full control of the vehicle, in Waymo the human intervenes to guide the stuck vehicle, but does not drive it directly. The workers who carry out these interventions do so from the Philippines.
Risks and criticisms. Tesla speaks of “exceptional cases”, but refused to give details about the frequency of these interventions, which for the Senate was insufficient since remote driving entails significant risks. If, for example, there is latency in the network, it would cause a delay in the remote driver’s orders and may have consequences. Tesla defends itself by arguing that revealing that information would “reveal highly sensitive trade secrets and confidential business practices” that Tesla needs to maintain its “competitive position in the autonomous vehicle industry.”
Image | Xataka
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