After a series of issues, Cruise robotaxis are reportedly aided by remote human assistants which are needed every four to five miles.
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Cruise Robotaxis Are Not-So Autonomous
In a New York Times report, it was revealed that when the driverless operations were stopped half of the Cruise's taxis were in San Francisco. Moreover, the vehicles have an assigned operations staff that will intervene and assist the vehicles every 2.5 to 5 miles, as per people familiar with the operations. This means that autonomous vehicles are being remotely controlled by workers once they receive a signal that the car is having problems.
Following the story's publication Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt commented on Hacker News and confirmed that the AVs are indeed remotely assisted two to four percent of the time on average but only in complex urban environments. "This is low enough already that there isn't a huge cost benefit to optimizing much further, especially given how useful it is to have humans review things in certain situations," Vogt added.
Additional details were also provided to CNBC which further clarified that the remote assistance sessions usually occur every four to five miles for the AVs. Regardless, the company remained firm that it is still minimal and that their operations staff is only providing wayfinding intel to the robotaxis, not controlling it remotely.
Cruise Faces Suspension on Driverless Operations
While the premise of the robotaxis became so promising during its launch. The transportation company faced many issues only months after it got the approval to provide service in San Francisco. Currently, Cruise's driverless operations are on halt while supervised AVs are still in service.
Meanwhile, the company's former and current employees and business partners are worrying that the problems will not be resolved easily. On the other hand, rivals of Cruise are also faced with concern as the issues could lead to tougher driverless car rules for all companies.
Currently, there are still unanswered questions despite the admittance of the company on the existence of the remote assistants. The company has still yet to provide as detailed information about its operations as it can regain the trust of people in its robotaxi service.
Related Article: Cruise Suspends Driverless Operations but Supervised AV Will Continue
