The Robotaxi companies won’t say how often operators intervene remotely

Self-driving car companies refuse to disclose basic details about their use of remote assistance teams, including how often those workers have to step in to help their self-driving cars.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) asked taxi companies to disclose information as part of… An investigation by his office into the use of remote assistance operators (Rao). The senator’s office sent letters to seven robotaxi companies — Aurora, May Mobility, Motional, Nuro, Tesla, Waymo and Amazon’s Zoox — seeking information about using remote workers to monitor self-driving vehicles and occasionally intervene when the vehicles need help. Their responses are then detailed in the report.

The investigation stems from a hearing in February during which… Markey questioned representatives from Waymo and Tesla About their use of remote assistance operators. During the hearing, Waymo’s chief safety officer revealed that some of Waymo’s remote customers are based in the Philippines. Additionally, there have been a few safety incidents involving remote customers, including one in Austin, Texas, where A Waymo car passed a school bus With an extended stop signal after receiving incorrect information from a remote assistant.

Markey says there should be strict rules around the use of remote assistants. But robotics companies have They defended their use of remote proxiesArguing that it represents an important support for autonomous vehicle driving technology.

In their responses, the companies revealed a number of interesting details about their use of remote workers. Waymo, for example, is the only company that uses remote agents based abroad. It is the only company in which a “large percentage” of its workers do not have American driver’s licenses. Waymo said remote workers in the Philippines are required to have driver’s licenses issued by that country.

It also reveals new details about Tesla’s use of remote operators. Last year, Tesla launched a limited Autopilot for taxis in Austin, Texas. But unlike Waymo, most of the company’s cars still feature safety drivers in the front passenger seat. In its response to Markey’s inquiries, Tesla admitted to sometimes using remote workers to drive vehicles at speeds of up to 10 mph. By comparison, Waymo said its remote agents can send a prompt to move the car at 2 mph, but they don’t control it directly.

“Direct input (remote assistance operator) is a last resort and is always limited in scope and duration,” Karen Stickley, Tesla’s director of public policy and business development, wrote in her response to the senator. “This capability enables Tesla to immediately move a vehicle that may be in a dangerous situation, thus alleviating the need to wait for a first responder or Tesla field representative to manually recover the vehicle.”

Tensions over robo-taxi remote assistance have been building for two weeks. Markey described the refusal to disclose the number of telematics interventions as a “staggering lack of transparency on the part of autonomous vehicle companies” and concluded that regulatory changes would be required to ensure the system operates safely.