Google Reveals 13 Cases In Last 2 Months Where Drivers Had To Re-Take Control Of It's Self Driving Cars To Avoid Collisions

New figures published by Google about its autonomous vehicle development reveal that test drivers had to re-take control of its cars a total of 13 times over two months in near-miss incidents.

Drivers were also handed back control thanks to 272 recorded technical issues, comprised of both software and hardware failures, illustrating how much work is still to be done before Google’s self-driving vehicles can reliably and safely operate unaided.

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TheSteve - 1/13/2016 12:34:31 PM

0 Boost

My understanding -- as a professional who has been designing and coding computer systems and applications for several decades -- is that one should expect this while a product is still in the "research, design, and development" stage. Google's cars are NOT in final trials, just before being put into production, so these things aren't shocking.

For more info on...
- Google's autonomous systems
- How a Google car "sees" the world around it
- Some of a Google car's "thinking" (logic)
...see this TED Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_sees_the_road

Agent009 - 1/13/2016 12:55:19 PM

+3 Boost

This very true, but Google also was wanting to release the software without driver controls. Therefore making driver intervention impossible.

I do realize that this is still testing and will be for quite a while so I take this all with a grain of salt.

I also certainly hope it is far better coded than Android is (quite a mess on many levels) or we are in for lot of trouble. Anytime you have a phone that is too busy running tasks to make a 911 call, makes me wonder if a selfdriving car can drive because it is busy sorting through a map database.

Agent009 - 1/13/2016 1:23:53 PM

+3 Boost

Also the report also indicates that in the last 15 months the software gave up control to the driver 272 times because it could not complete the driving task successfully, and there were 69 driver interventions during that time frame.

I estimate it will be well over a decade before anyone seriously considers removing the driver controls simply due to the inconsistencies that humans introduce into the equation. You have to have more self driving cars than not on the road to starting weeding out the human factor.