The American Waymo, a company that grew out of Google, is one of the world leaders in the implementation of autonomous driving technologies, their robot taxis are already driving in several American cities, and expansion to Europe has also been announced. However, this expansion is not always without problems, so we have already read that their autonomous taxis can get confused, stray onto the tracks, sometimes take part in traffic accidents or honking uncontrollably at night.
Remote controllers
The leaders of Waymo, however, together with their competitors from Tesla, are lobbying the legislators in the US to relax the rules, so that they can continue the race with Chinese manufacturers. Such lobbying led to hearings before the Senate last week, where it was revealed that Waymo has a small secret when it comes to remote control of cars.
Namely, the senators “sieged” representatives of Waymo, telling them that they rely too much on Chinese technology (specifically Geely’s Zeekr brand cars), as well as foreign workers. In that conversation, it was disclosed that, in the event that the robot taxi “gets stuck” somewhere, has a traffic problem that it cannot solve by itself, the operator jumps in to help it and tries to solve the situation remotely. Those remote operators, Waymo admitted, are located in the Philippines, which did not sit well with US lawmakers.
However, it was further explained to them that the operators from that center do not have control over the cars, in the sense that they can drive them “remotely”. Instead, they only serve as “advisors” who look at the situation through cameras and sensors, and initiate a solution to the problem – and then the autonomous vehicle software takes over the wheel and continues driving according to instructions. Therefore, it is not a question of remote management, but an advanced version of “troubleshooting”, which is carried out both from the Philippine and from the American control centers.