We spoke to the man who was stuck in a Waymo robot car in an amazing episode
A month ago, a video clip of A Waymo’s robo-taxi is stuck in a loop – An isolated incident with no passengers in the vehicle, according to the Waymo website.
Apparently, it wasn’t a one-time thing.
Around the same time, in another Waymo robotaxi headed to the Phoenix airport, Mike Jones, founder and CEO of AI consultancy Digital Mind State, also found himself circling the parking lot, unable to park or get out.
The videos were posted within two days of each other. Waymo has not confirmed whether the incidents occurred at the same time or whether there have been other similar incidents, but it says it has released software updates to fix the problem.
Jones was stuck on Waymo experiencing a ride that lasted “less than seven minutes,” but says it “felt like forever,” especially since he feared he would miss his flight and wondered if the car had been hacked. This was his second time in a Waymo robot car.
A Waymo spokesperson confirmed the incident. “This event occurred in early December and has since been addressed through a regularly scheduled software update. The vehicle completed the passenger’s journey and they were not charged for the trip.
A Waymo customer support specialist called the car without asking Johns, he told TechCrunch. The dealership said it received notice that his car “may be having some steering issues,” according to A video From the incident shared by Jones.
To solve the problem, the specialist asked Johns to open his Waymo app and click “My Trip” in the lower left corner of the screen. [the] app,” Jones replied, “Can’t you do that? You should be able to handle it, take the car, I don’t need my phone.
A fair question to ask, since such an acquisition is ostensibly the purpose of the remote assistant.
“I don’t have a choice to control the car,” she admitted.
Waymo tells TechCrunch that its rider support agents are different from its own Fleet Response Teamwhich is what the self-driving software (known as the “Waymo Driver”) taps for help if it encounters an unfamiliar situation on the road.
Rider support agents, like the one Johns spoke with, can respond to communication from passengers — riders can communicate through the Waymo app and the car’s call button. They can also “initiate communication if Waymo vehicle diagnostics indicate such a need.” But it does not interact directly with the car’s driving software.
Ultimately, Jones says, following the support agent’s directions in the app got the robo-taxi back on track.
Johns said Waymo compensated him for the trip and directed him to its website to file a complaint. The company did not contact him immediately after the incident, but did so this week after his video was captured Major news agencies.
“The most important thing to me is that in this digital age we live in, we are completely disconnected from the human factor,” Jones told TechCrunch. “I am completely in favor of AI. I am on the cutting edge between AI, automation and robotics, but there is still a human factor.
This incident, though small, illustrates a larger problem that autonomous vehicle companies must solve, says Missy Cummings, a professor of autonomy and robotics at George Mason University and former senior safety advisor for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
“In any automated system, there’s a big red button somewhere that, if you press it, this thing will come off,” Cummings told TechCrunch, noting that the button could be hidden somewhere in the car that’s hard to reach. “And I will tell you that this is a really important security measure going forward because what happens if the car is hacked by someone and there’s a passenger inside the car? You definitely need to be able to stop everything in the car remotely so they can get out.
Waymo told TechCrunch that, in fact, “Waymo cars have a checkout button available to riders at all times,” located in the app and on the riders’ screen, but Johns said the support agent didn’t tell him that, and he didn’t see that.
Cummings also noted that requiring the rider to be an active participant in the repair using their app is “error-prone” due to potential connectivity issues and apps that are not user-friendly.
“It astounds me that she was trying to get him into his phone to figure this out, when clearly this is an urgent situation that needs to be taken care of immediately,” Cummings said. She should have said, “Look, pull the left corner of the rug across the floor and you’ll see a red button. Press this button.”
