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You might recall the congressional hearing last month that sparked criticism against Waymo over its use of remote assistance workers in the Philippines. We have covered that issue extensively. You can read about the company’s remote assistance and road assistance teams here and here.
Waymo tends to get the most attention because, well, those robotaxis are now operating commercially in 10 U.S. cities, with more coming soon. But the issue of remote assistance is not a Waymo issue. It’s an autonomous vehicle technology issue.
A new report from Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) makes my point.
Markey sent letters to seven U.S. companies — Aurora, May Mobility, Motional, Nuro, Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox — working on autonomous vehicle technology with a list of questions. He wanted to know how often these companies’ vehicles relied on input from remote staff.
They all refused to say, according to the results of Markey’s investigation. Markey said it was a “stunning lack of transparency from the AV companies around their use of remote assistance operators to help guide their AVs.”
You can read senior reporter Sean O’Kane’s article, which digs into the issue and includes the rather mute responses from the companies. (TechCrunch reached out to all of them.) One interesting admission from Tesla: The company said its remote assistance workers are authorized to temporarily assume direct vehicle control (a very different thing than “remote assistance”) as a final escalation maneuver.
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But here’s the thing — this is not going away. And silence will not defuse the matter. If anything, Markey seems more motivated than ever to get answers. He is now calling on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to investigate companies’ use of remote assistance workers and said he is “working on legislation to impose strict guardrails on AV companies’ use of remote operators.”
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Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Nothing this week that we have been able to verify. Send us tips! Have one? Email Kirsten Korosec at [email protected] or my Signal at kkorosec.07, or email Sean O’Kane at [email protected].
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Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
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