And these foreign crowd workers know the local traffic rules? Maybe they even have regular drivers licenses?
Here’s a short video of someone receiving help. They explain briefly that they provide instructions to the vehicle, they don’t do the actual driving
This is how it generally behaves, but they are capable of taking direct control in more difficult situations. It’s only very slow maneurvers though, it’s not like they would be driving it down the street. They could move it off the road onto the shoulder though if needed.
Edit: I am trying to find the source, but having problems. It was only ever mentioned in 1 official waymo document that I’ve seen that it was technically possible. My guess is they say their remote helpers can’t / don’t do it because they truly can’t, and it’s some highly restricted type of person who can, who isn’t classified like these other employees. The whole misleading but technical true kinda speak. I’ll keep looking though because I was really surprised to see them admit it when I saw it in an official document.
Found it
In very limited circumstances such as to facilitate movement of the AV out of a freeway lane onto an adjacent shoulder, if possible, our Event Response agents are able to remotely move the Waymo AV under strict parameters, including at a very low speed over a very short distance.
Looks like I was right as well on terminology, it’s not the remote operators that can do it, it’s the “Event Response” team that can.
As far as I know this is the only official acknowledgement it’s possible. Everywhere else they say it isn’t, and this is a footnote in that document.
at a very low speed over a very short distance.
LOL so when they get in a situation in a tunnel that is 10 or 20 km long (ok you have them only 4km in poor Usa, but we have them here), they first drive it at 10km/h and then they give up after 300m? Because the rules are the rules??
From the description it’s really not meant to solve that. In a situation like that they’d have to send someone, but they would be able to get out of the middle of a lane, off to the side, even if that only gives an extra foot or two of space to pass the vehicle.
Edit: And that’s assuming their remote helpers couldn’t direct the car to drive itself out using their other tool where the AI drives itself with their suggestions.
This would have actually been a great thing to not only acknowledge but promote if they weren’t so caught up in their own hype.
Not that I will ever get into one of those death traps but if you tell the average consumer that any failures in autonomy immediately engage a tele-operator “to keep you moving on your way” they would probably feel better about riding.
I’ve done tele-driving before and it’s remarkably good, even if latency is a concern.
It’s the facade of it all, the need to seem to live up to the hype. It’s going to get more people killed.
any failures in autonomy immediately engage a tele-operator
One of the problems is that these “failures in autonomy” could include a failure to engage a tele-operator when one is needed.
They just stop moving when that happens. It’s been the cause of many traffic jams.
I work near downtown Austin, where both Waymo and Robotaxi operate.
Waymo cars are some of the best drivers on the road because they actuallyt ested their product, use multiple Lidar sensors instead of just cameras, and have remote driver backups for unusual situations.
Teslas drive like maniacs and will end a ride and tell the driver to get out in the middle of a lane.
Automation has always been about de-skilling to cheaper, more abuse-able labour, and not about actually eliminating work. This goes all the way back to the broad looms and the luddites. There were still loom workers in the new factories - its just that they were children who could be worked to death for pennies.
The Mechanical Turk strikes again.
Waymo knowing when it is stumped is actually a pretty good thing. Better than just running over cats & small children.
For anyone that is curious, Waymo actually is capable of remote moving the vehicles despite what they say. They do their best not to admit it’s possible, but it’s right in the CPUC filings as a footnote, and probably the only place they’ll ever admit it.
In very limited circumstances such as to facilitate movement of the AV out of a freeway lane onto an adjacent shoulder, if possible, our Event Response agents are able to remotely move the Waymo AV under strict parameters, including at a very low speed over a very short distance.
I’m not opposed or knocking that they can do this, but they are lying to or misleading people when they say it can’t be done.
deleted by creator
Anyone else not very impressed?
Moravy also argued that to stop anybody from taking control of vehicles, the company “actively participates in hacking events
Read this slowly:
Here they admit that their vehicles can be hacked and then remotely cotrolled.
“Your kid is safe at school, because we insist all teachers use condoms”
I still have no idea how these are legally able to operate on public roads. Shit seems wild to me. Wouldn’t last 5 seconds here in Chicago, for numerous reasons lol
Why won’t waymo work in Chicago specifically?
Let’s get rid of undocumented workers they said
Each worker has a readme now, it’s alright /s
This is way better than Robo Taxi convoys of 2 chase cars following one driverless vehicle. A fraction of the footprint and manpower cost of Musk’s venture.
Actually Islanders at it again
the same thing happened with that Amazon shop that you could apparently take anything out without checking out and it would automatically charge your account…
turns out they had workers watching the camera footage
Yay, wireless slave wagies!!
