Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Passers-by were hit and lost a lot of blood, which was the fatal moment of racing against time and death, but the ambulance was blocking a driverless Robotaxi on the sidewalk. In the end, the injured died because he could not be sent to hospital in time.

This is the latest controversy in Silicon Valley, and Robotaxi has once again been criticized in the United States.

GM Cruise, which led the way in the driverless landing, responded that its Robotaxi did not prevent vehicles from going to the hospital-but refused to release live videos.

In any case, however, the accident made another issue hot again:

What on earth should be done about the redundancy in the landing phase of the operation?

Prior to this, GM Cruise introduced a contingency plan, but from this accident, it is clear that the plan is not enough "emergency". Because for Robotaxi takeover in special situations, GM Cruise's solution is to contact customer service by phone, and then customer service goes through the process-however, there is an obvious loophole in GM Cruise's plan: the contact method is for passengers in the car to get out of trouble, without taking into account the situation of the traffic scene outside the car.

For example, this time, the ambulance is in a hurry, GM Cruise's unmanned car does not know how to make way, and others are unable to take over in time. Finally, Robotaxi got caught up in the controversy over human life.

Of course, it was also at this time that the 5G cloud ride mentioned by Robotaxi on the other side of the Pacific Ocean was also mentioned again in the discussion.

Maybe in this special situation, cloud driving is really a good solution.

The whole process of the controversial and controversial incident in which Robotaxi is accused of delaying rescue is as follows:

In San Francisco, USA, a pedestrian was knocked down by a car and was seriously injured. Foreign media reported that he was losing clear consciousness at that time, could not communicate clearly with his surroundings, and needed to be sent to hospital immediately, and passers-by immediately called an ambulance.

But in this emergency, two Cruise unmanned taxis parked on the right side of the accident scene, blocking the entry and exit of vehicles at the accident scene.

Rescue workers later revealed in a public report that attempts to manually take over the self-driving vehicle were unsuccessful.

In the end, the seriously injured pedestrian was pronounced dead due to delay in medical treatment and failure to receive timely care.

The news ignited the anger of San Francisco residents, who were already dissatisfied with Robotaxi, and many people gathered at Cruise's headquarters to protest.

Earlier, some people thought that Robotaxi disrupted community traffic, affected the original pace, and had extreme behavior, but this time, it was "good reason to do things."

Cruise also quickly gave an official response, saying that there was no traffic blocking the ambulance road. Robotaxi's car was parked there because it was waiting for a red light. After the light was changed, one of the cars decisively gave way, and the ambulance passed.

GM Cruise also showed live video to the media, but declined to make it public.

However, the public anger has not subsided. In the hot discussion, the emergency plan of GM Cruise landing operation in Robotaxi has been repeatedly denounced.

Cruise has repeatedly stressed on the official website that he can call in case of emergency and leave contact information in the document.

However, this kind of telephone contact seems to be more for passengers in the car, because there is no contact information or direct communication phone number left on the outside of the car body, so in case of emergency, the contact will become "complex".

Some netizens also said, do you have to log on to your official website to find a contact number in case of emergency?

And Cruise does not seem to have a corresponding operating team, and their unmanned taxis can remotely remove "autopilot", but after stopping autopilot, Cruise's practice of unmanned cars is to find a place to stop and wait for the staff to come to "take over".

In the United States, Waymo and Cruise have adopted a similar scheme, which is the idea of remote assistance, and the core is to rely on the autopilot system to solve problems in special situations.

On the one hand, this is naturally a solution based on technical thinking, hoping that the autopilot system will continue to undergo special scene testing and learning, and finally can go anywhere and deal with any scene.

On the other hand, this is also the demographic reality that the United States must face. As we all know, the United States is vast and sparsely populated, if the landing Robotaxi can not reduce the labor elements in the whole process as much as possible, then the cost and operating economic account can not be balanced.

However, in the face of such an extreme event, AI drivers really do not have the flexibility of human drivers to quickly make way for ambulances-rather than obeying traffic light rules.

The challenge of the landing phase of Robotaxi has once again become a hot search from an individual case.

Operational redundancy of Robotaxi during the research and development of Robotaxi and autopilot, the most frequently mentioned are "sensor redundancy" and "safety redundancy".

For example, the most typical multi-sensor fusion route, such as lidar, is essentially to achieve camera vision redundancy through lidar, which can provide more protection for autopilot and make the system more robust in dealing with special and extreme scenes.

However, in the operational stage, we are faced with new challenges-- not from the technology itself, but from the flexibility and worldly sophistication beyond the clear rules of human society.

For example, when you need to make way for an ambulance in a special situation, you may need to break the rules and be flexible, which these AI drivers can't do, and even human drivers in mixed traffic can't communicate quickly.

This is why operational redundancy becomes particularly important after Robotaxi enters the landing phase.

At present, there are not many players who do redundancy for the operation on a large scale. The previously controversial 5G cloud ride is one of them.

Just after the 5G network began to roll out, domestic Robotaxi players began to announce plans related to the deployment of 5G cloud drivers as Robotaxi operational redundancy before the security guards were completely eliminated.

The so-called 5G cloud driving is to display the surrounding environment on the remote electronic screen with the help of 5G high bandwidth and low delay, and then remotely control the steering wheel, stop lever, throttle and brake of the vehicle through the network.

The car owner is still a "AI old driver", but the remote end deploys a "human old driver" at the same time. One person keeps an eye on multiple cars, and if there are special circumstances, they will take over remotely to help them out of difficulties and solve challenges in a timely manner. At first glance, the work of cloud driving is a bit like playing a racing game, but they actually want a human to monitor multiple cars at the same time and keep their attention at all times.

The benefits of 5G cloud driving are obvious. When Robotaxi encounters scenarios that cannot be solved by the program at this stage on the road, the remote end can take over in time to help unmanned taxis out of trouble.

However, the other side of the previous controversy is that this is "not enough technology", "not low enough cost", "can not really achieve large-scale landing."

This suspicion is not difficult to understand. Compared with AI drivers to solve everything, a human driver is certainly not skilled enough. Cloud driving costs both equipment and labor, so it is better to get rid of labor as much as possible. Large-scale landing really requires the corresponding 5G cloud driving facilities to cover, the cost will only rise, there is no marginal effect.

But if it is a specific accident of Cruise, is there a more effective way to solve the problem than 5G cloud driving?

Perhaps not, or better than that, and what must be faced squarely is that behind this specific accident is a real cost of life.

So Robotaxi is indeed the trend of the times, and it is in a great deal of trouble, coming to the eve of the outbreak, but the challenge of operation landing has only just begun.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.