Insight: Truly autonomous cars may be impossible without helpful human touch
12/09/2022 07:00
By Nick Carey and Paul Lienert
MILTON KEYNES, England, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Autonomous
vehicle (AV) startups have raised tens of billions of dollars
based on promises to develop truly self-driving cars, but
industry executives and experts say remote human supervisors may
be needed permanently to help robot drivers in trouble.
The central premise of autonomous vehicles - that computers
and artificial intelligence will dramatically reduce accidents
caused by human error - has driven much of the research and
investment.
But there is a catch: Making robot cars that can drive more
safely than people is immensely tough because self-driving
software systems simply lack humans' ability to predict and
assess risk quickly, especially when encountering unexpected
incidents or "edge cases."
"Well, my question would be, 'Why?'" said Kyle Vogt, CEO of
Cruise, a unit of General Motors GM.N , when asked if he could
see a point where remote human overseers should be removed from
operations.
"I can provide my customers peace of mind knowing there is
always a human there to help if needed," Vogt said. "I don't
know why I'd ever want to get rid of that."
This is the first time Cruise has acknowledged the long-term
need for remote human operators.
Alphabet Inc's GOOGL.O Waymo and Argo, which is backed by
Ford Motor Co F.N and Volkswagen AG VOWG_p.DE , declined to
comment when asked the same question.
GM recalled and updated software in 80 Cruise self-driving
vehicles this month after a June crash in San Francisco left two
people injured. U.S. safety regulators said the recalled
software could "incorrectly predict" an oncoming vehicle's path,
and Cruise said the unusual scenario would not recur after the
update. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N3080R5
For some, the idea that human supervisors could be here to
stay raises more doubts about the technology.
Truly autonomous vehicles are far behind the optimistic
rollout schedules predicted just a few years ago.
In 2018, GM sought U.S. government approval for a fully
autonomous car without a steering wheel, brake or accelerator
pedals that would enter its commercial ride-sharing fleet in
2019. That vehicle, the Cruise Origin, now is not slated to
begin production until spring 2023, Vogt said.
In 2019, Tesla Inc TSLA.O CEO Elon Musk promised a million
robotaxis "next year for sure" - though his company's "Full Self
Driving" offering has been criticized because its cars are not
capable of driving themselves without a human behind the wheel
and ready to take manual control in an emergency.
In a June interview on YouTube, Musk said developing
self-driving cars was "way harder than I originally thought, by
far." But when asked for a timeline, he said Tesla could make it
"this year."
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment for this
story.
The undelivered promise of true autonomy has raised the
stakes for the AV industry.
"If these companies don't succeed over the next two years,
they're not going to exist anymore," said Mike Wagner, CEO of
Edge Case Research, which helps AV companies assess, manage and
insure risk. "It's a case of put up or shut up at this point."
REMOTE HUMANS WATCHING
Many AV startups today use humans as remote supervisors,
alongside safety drivers sitting behind the wheel. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL4N2OO36A
Those remote humans are an additional expense, but help
self-driving cars handle edge cases. These could include
something as basic as an unfamiliar set of lane closures during
road construction, or erratic, unpredictable behavior by
pedestrians or human drivers.
When a robot driver encounters an edge case, "it puts its
hands up and says, 'I don't know what's going on,'" said Koosha
Kaveh, CEO of Imperium Drive, which is using humans as remote
operators for cars in the English city of Milton Keynes. Over
time, those people will act as "air traffic controllers,"
supervising a growing number of autonomous cars.
Cruise's Vogt says the company's AVs on the roads in San
Francisco currently rely on humans less than 1% of the time. But
across hundreds, thousands or even millions of AVs, that would
add up to a significant amount of time stopped on the road
waiting for human guidance.
Imperium Drive's Kaveh said as more self-driving cars -
which are more predictable than humans - hit the roads the
number of edge cases will drop, "but you will never get to zero
edge cases."
"Even decades from now you will not get to 100% truly
autonomous vehicles," Kaveh added.
Nevertheless, competition is rising. Some Chinese cities are
pushing to allow active AV testing more quickly.
The need to tackle edge cases and cut the costs of
everything from sensors to the number of humans in the loop in
order to get to market has also intensified because investor
funding for autonomous cars has plummeted.
Doubt has crept in as investors puzzle over how soon
autonomous business will turn profitable. Simpler or slower AVs
like trucks or last-mile delivery services operating on highways
or on set, low-speed routes are likely to reach profitability
first, but will still take years to get there.
Overall investment in future mobility startups has slowed,
with AV-focused companies hit especially hard, representing less
than 10% of venture investment in the second quarter, according
to investor website PitchBook. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/3Rzy04y)
Investment in AV startups in the quarter dropped to $958
million. Just two years ago AV investment was booming, as
Alphabet's Waymo raised $3 billion, Didi's AV unit raised $500
million and Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O acquired AV startup Zoox for
$1.3 billion, according to PitchBook.
'RUSH TO MARKET'
Autonomous systems are not as capable as people because
their "perception and prediction algorithms are not as good as
how a human brain processes and decides," said Chris
Borroni-Bird, an independent consultant who previously led
advanced-vehicle programs at GM and Waymo.
For instance, a human when seeing a ball roll into the road
- harmless by itself - will assume it could be followed by a
child and hit the brakes far quicker than an AV, Borroni-Bird
said.
"I am concerned that AV companies will rush to market
without proving the safety is better than human-driven
vehicles," he added.
The problem is there are "tens of billions of potential edge
cases" that AVs could encounter, said James Routh, CEO of AB
Dynamics ABDP.L , which conducts tests and runs simulations on
cars including on the advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS)
that are the foundation of autonomous driving features.
Auto data startup Wejo Group Ltd WEJO.O receives 18
billion data points daily from millions of connected cars and is
helping with simulations for AVs, said Sarah Larner, executive
vice president for strategy and innovation.
"But there are so many variables such as weather, you can
take an edge case and then have to layer in all the different
variants," she said. "It's truly millions of outputs."
DRIVERLESS DELIVERY
In its track tests for cars, AB Dynamics employs a robot arm
that it plans to retrofit on slow-moving mining and agricultural
trucks to make them largely autonomous.
Routh envisages a remote team of humans supervising fleets
of, for instance, self-driving mining trucks operating in closed
environments.
He does not see that scenario working for vehicles in
faster, more open environments because it could be difficult for
remote human supervisors to react quickly enough to dangers.
Within the next 12 months, British online food delivery and
technology company Ocado Group Plc OCDO.L will roll out a
small fleet of driverless delivery vehicles with autonomous
vehicle software startup Oxbotica - backed by remote human
supervisors - that will operate on just a few streets on set
routes in a small UK city and never drive at speeds above 30
miles (48 km) per hour.
"At 30 miles an hour, if a vehicle panics, it can hit the
emergency brake and seek help," Ocado's head of advanced
technology, Alex Harvey, said. "This feels like a very viable
strategy at low speed."
"But you can't play that game on a motorway," Harvey added,
because hard stops in edge cases would pose a safety risk.
Harvey said it should take around five years for Ocado to
develop a profitable driverless delivery system. More than half
of Ocado's UK customers could be reached with AVs driving no
more than 40 mph he said. Eventually, the service could be
rolled out to Ocado clients like U.S. retail chain Kroger Co.
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(Reporting by Nick Carey in Milton Keynes, England, and Paul
Lienert in Detroit
Editing by Ben Klayman and Matthew Lewis)
((nick.carey@thomsonreuters.com; +44 7385 414 954;))