Google ditched autopilot driving feature after test user napped behind wheel

[Shahzaz ud din]

Google ditched autopilot driving feature after test user napped behind wheel
Reuters | Published — Tuesday 31 October 2017

ATWATER, California: Alphabet Inc’s self-driving car unit stopped developing features that required drivers to take control in dangerous situations, its chief executive said Monday, as autopilot reliance left users prone to distractions and ill-prepared to maneuver.
The decision followed experiments of the technology in Silicon Valley that showed test users napping, putting on makeup and fiddling with their phones as the vehicles traveled up to 56 mph.
John Krafcik, the head of Waymo, which was formed in 2009 as a project within Alphabet’s Google unit, told reporters that about five years ago the company envisioned technology that could autonomously drive cars on highways as a quick way to get on the market.
Other self-driving automakers include similar autopilot features for highway-driving in vehicles, but they require drivers to take over the steering wheel in tricky situations. Waymo planned to do the same.
“What we found was pretty scary,” Krafcik said onMonday during a media tour of a Waymo testing facility. “It’s hard to take over because they have lost contextual awareness.”
Krafcik said the company determined a system that asked drivers to jump in at the sound of an alert was unsafe after seeing videos from inside self-driving cars during tests.
The filmed tests were conducted in 2013, with Google employees behind the wheel. The videos had not been publicly shown until Monday’s event, Waymo spokeswoman Lauren Barriere said.
The company decided to focus solely on technology that didn’t require human intervention a couple of days after the napping incident, said Krafcik, who joined as CEO in 2015. It has also since argued against allowing “handoffs” between automated driving systems and people.
“Our technology takes care of all of the driving, allowing passengers to stay passengers,” the company said in report this month.
The two drive controls provided to passengers in Waymo’s Chrysler Pacifica minivans are buttons for starting a ride and asking the vehicles to pull over at their next chance.
Waymo is running a ride-hailing pilot program around Phoenix, Arizona that chauffeurs an undisclosed, but growing number of users in self-driving cars. The service area is limited to well-mapped roads on which Waymo has extensively tested.
Krafcik declined to specify when the company would expand beyond the small experiment, saying only that such a moment is getting “close.”
He reiterated that the company is simultaneously also identifying ways to launch self-driving trucks, municipal transit services and partnerships with carmakers.
“We see four potential applications, whether it’s Waymo branded or not,” he said.

 

[war&peace]

Autopilot is not ready to take the control of the vehicles. You can't offer a mixed control to consumers: the autopilot will work under normal situations but when there is an abnormal situation or off design condition, you have to take the controls... This is not an airplane flying alone in the vast sky with thousands of sensors and control tower support. It's a car running on congested roads where the probability of outlier happening is not that low and a autopilot needs to be able to cope with all the situations. Not all drivers follow the rules, some drivers are drunk, some are simply crazy and their can be rich prince who would like to speed up without the fear of traffic ticket.

Going at or above 60 mph smoothly on a boring long highway and you thought to take a nap and all of the sudden autopilot alerts you take the control ...doesn't work.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Autopilot is not ready to take the control of the vehicles. You can't offer a mixed control to consumers: the autopilot will work under normal situations but when there is an abnormal situation or off design condition, you have to take the controls... This is not an airplane flying alone in the vast sky with thousands of sensors and control tower support. It's a car running on congested roads where the probability of outlier happening is not that low and a autopilot needs to be able to cope with all the situations. Not all drivers follow the rules, some drivers are drunk, some are simply crazy and their can be rich prince who would like to speed up without the fear of traffic ticket.

Going at or above 60 mph smoothly on a boring long highway and you thought to take a nap and all of the sudden autopilot alerts you take the control ...doesn't work.

This point by Google seems moot as the assumption is autonomous vehicles will include buses where there will simply be no driver. It is expected to handle these situations. If during testing the backup human driver is basically useless well that is a bug in their testing.

 

[war&peace]

This point by Google seems moot as the assumption is autonomous vehicles will include buses where there will simply be no driver. It is expected to handle these situations. If during testing the backup human driver is basically useless well that is a bug in their testing.

There is a fundamental difference between the self driving buses and cars. Self driving buses are mainly for metropolitan areas with designated routes and those will follow an invisible track like driverless metro trains. But a private car or SUV has a much broader scope of drive. From metropolitan areas to highways and even off-roading. So a full functional autopilot needs to masters all these options. So it would be limited to, say, highways and expressways much like the cruise control.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

There is a fundamental difference between the self driving buses and cars. Self driving buses are mainly for metropolitan areas with designated routes and those will follow an invisible track like driverless metro trains. But a private car or SUV has a much broader scope of drive. From metropolitan areas to highways and even off-roading. So a full functional autopilot needs to masters all these options. So it would be limited to, say, highways and expressways much like the cruise control.

It still has to handle issues like the road being blocked by a car accident. While maybe the number of different events that could happen on the highway is a smaller subset as that of general roads...they still exist and have to be accounted for.