All posts tagged: Robotaxis

Autonomous robo-taxis now driving themselves on British streets | Science, Climate & Tech News

Autonomous robo-taxis now driving themselves on British streets | Science, Climate & Tech News

Published by skeptic

Autonomous taxis are now driving themselves around London streets, the American company behind the technology has announced. The self-driving cars have been in the capital since last autumn, but until now, they were under the manual control of “safety drivers”. Now, Waymo says, they’re being controlled by artificial intelligence, albeit with a human sitting in the driver’s seat just in case. Image: A Waymo car drives itself through London. Pic: Waymo The company has had humans driving the cars across “tens of thousands of miles on London roads”. “The early mileage provides a baseline of context for the Waymo Driver, and has enabled our team to train the Driver in a simulated London environment,” it said. Image: A Waymo car navigates past a cyclist. Pic: Waymo Within the “past few weeks”, however, the company told Sky News it had started letting the cars take control. When can I order a ride in a robo-taxi? Waymo described today’s announcement as “the next step” towards “fully autonomous passenger service[s] later this year, pending government approval”. Image: Waymo …

Uber and Nuro begin testing premium robotaxi service in San Francisco

Uber and Nuro begin testing premium robotaxi service in San Francisco

Published by skeptic

If you spot a Lucid Gravity SUV blinged-out with sensors — and a self-driving system developed by Nuro — driving around San Francisco, chances are that’s an Uber employee taking a ride. Select Uber employees can now request a ride in a Lucid robotaxi through the Uber app, the latest phase of testing ahead of a planned public launch later this year. Nuro, which provided the update in a blog posted Monday, told TechCrunch the vehicles are operating in autonomous mode and have a human safety operator behind the wheel as backup. While this is far from a public launch, it does signal the companies’ progress since announcing a partnership and multimillion-dollar investment in July 2025. Uber invested $300 million in Lucid and separately agreed to buy “at least” 20,000 of the EV maker’s new Gravity SUV over the next six years. Those EVs are equipped with Nuro’s autonomous vehicle system, which is powered by Nvidia’s Drive AGX Thor computer. The Lucid Gravity robotaxi, which was revealed in January, is outfitted with high-resolution cameras, solid-state …

TechCrunch Mobility: Who is poaching all the self-driving vehicle talent?

TechCrunch Mobility: Who is poaching all the self-driving vehicle talent?

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, how AI is playing a part. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Normally, I have an analysis and then a little bird (my insidery bits curated just for you). But today I am combining them because I simply have too many little birds talking to me about the new talent wars. About seven years ago, the founder of a self-driving vehicle company told me that competing with the likes of Waymo for talent was “like a knife fight.” Now it seems there is a new poaching war going on, according to a handful of little birds. And it’s pushing base salaries (not including equity and other benefits) to between $300,000 and $500,000.  Here’s what is happening. The buzzy physical AI sector is filled with robotics and defense tech companies looking for people with a specific set of skills (to quote Liam Neeson). And these folks are mostly working at …

TechCrunch Mobility: ‘A stunning lack of transparency’

TechCrunch Mobility: ‘A stunning lack of transparency’

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! 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 …

Dozens of Robotaxis In China Stop Dead in the Middle of Roads and Highways, Causing Crashes

Dozens of Robotaxis In China Stop Dead in the Middle of Roads and Highways, Causing Crashes

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech A massive system failure on Tuesday left over a hundred robotaxis stranded in the streets of Wuhan, China, Wired reports, with dozens of the cars stopping dead in the middle of traffic and even highways. The robotaxis are operated by Baidu, a Chinese tech conglomerate which has deployed hundreds of the self-driving cars in the central China city.  Footage uploaded to social media paints a partial picture of the chaos. One dashcam video — it appears to be this one — shows a driver passing at least 16 of Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxis that stopped in the road in the span of 90 minutes, according to the magazine’s reporting, congesting traffic. Others showed them halted in highways, sometimes in the fast lane. The outage appears to have resulted in at least three crashes. On the Chinese social media site RedNote, a user who uploaded dashcam footage says he rear-ended a stranded Baidu robotaxi after the car in front …

‘System failure’ paralyzes Baidu robotaxis in China

‘System failure’ paralyzes Baidu robotaxis in China

Published by skeptic

Robotaxis operated by Baidu’s Apollo Go stalled throughout Wuhan, China, in some cases trapping passengers for up to two hours, according to multiple media reports as well as numerous video and social media posts. Baidu has not shared what caused the widespread outage. However, local police said it was a “system failure” that affected at least 100 robotaxis, Reuters reported. The unknown technical error caused robotaxis to suddenly freeze — and sometimes in dangerous spots such as the fast lane of roadways, according to Wired. Police are still investigating the matter. Baidu did not respond to TechCrunch’s emailed request for comment. Baidu is one of the largest robotaxi operators in China and has expanded to the Middle East. Last year, the company said it planned to deploy a fleet of more than 1,000 autonomous vehicles in Dubai over the next few years. The recent Baidu outage is the latest incident to raise questions about the safety of robotaxis and their impact on local communities. And it’s not just isolated to China. A widespread power outage in California …

Robotaxi Outage in China Leaves Passengers Stranded on Highways

Robotaxi Outage in China Leaves Passengers Stranded on Highways

Published by skeptic

An unknown technical problem caused a number of robotaxis owned by the Chinese tech giant Baidu to freeze on Tuesday in the middle of traffic, trapping some passengers in the vehicles for more than an hour. In Wuhan, a city in central China where Baidu has deployed hundreds of its Apollo Go self-driving taxis, people on Chinese social media reported witnessing the cars suddenly malfunction and stop operating. Photos and videos shared online show the Baidu cars halted on busy highways, often in the fast lane. A college student in Wuhan tells WIRED that she was stuck in a Baidu robotaxi with two friends for about 90 minutes on Tuesday. (She asked to be only identified with her last name, He, to protect her privacy.) The student says the car malfunctioned and stopped four or five times during the trip before it eventually parked in front of an intersection in eastern Wuhan. Luckily, it was not a busy road, and the group was not in immediate danger. The screen display in the car asked the …

Robotaxi companies refuse to say how often their AVs need remote help

Robotaxi companies refuse to say how often their AVs need remote help

Published by skeptic

In February, Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) sent letters to seven U.S. companies working on autonomous vehicle technology with a list of questions. He especially wanted to know how often these companies’ vehicles — operated by Aurora, May Mobility, Motional, Nuro, Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox — rely on input from remote staff. They all refused to say, according to the results of Markey’s investigation, which were released Tuesday. The information published by Markey’s office is the latest example of how hesitant autonomous vehicle companies are to share details about how their operations truly work — despite the fact that they are all experimenting with this technology on public roads. “This report has revealed a stunning lack of transparency from the AV companies around their use of [remote assistance operators] to help guide their AVs. The investigation exposed a patchwork of safety practices across the industry, with significant variation in operator qualifications, response times, and overseas staffing, all without any federal standards governing these operations,” Markey’s office wrote in its report. Markey said Tuesday that he is …

Tesla Admits Its Robotaxis Are Being Driven Remotely

Tesla Admits Its Robotaxis Are Being Driven Remotely

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Autonomous ride-hailing service Waymo made headlines last month after one of its executives explained during a Congressional hearing that the company relied on an army of “remote assistant operators” in the Philippines who are tasked with getting vehicles unstuck when they’re stumped. The February hearing, convened by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, once again highlighted that despite their best efforts to make it seem like there is no human in the loop, companies like Waymo continue to rely on them for the most delicate moments during their operations — even if Waymo’s remote operators technically never take over control over the wheel, as a spokesperson took pains to clarify at the time. Committee member and senator Ed Markey (D-MA) has led the charge for more transparency into the matter. As Wired reports, a series of letters he received from seven different robotaxi companies, including Tesla, Amazon’s Zoox, and Nuro, detail how humans remain a core …

Tesla Says Its Robotaxis Are Sometimes Driven by Remote Humans

Tesla Says Its Robotaxis Are Sometimes Driven by Remote Humans

Published by skeptic

A series of letters sent by autonomous-vehicle (AV) developers to Democratic US senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts sheds the most light yet on the human side of robot vehicle operations. In the documents, submitted to Markey as part of an investigation into self-driving-vehicle technology and released on Tuesday, seven companies, including Tesla, Amazon-owned Zoox, and Uber- and Nvidia-funded Nuro, released new details about their “remote assistance” programs. All the companies that responded to the senator’s office say they use remote assistants—humans charged with responding to autonomous vehicles when they get confused, stuck, or in emergencies. The programs, experts say, are an important part of any autonomous vehicle company’s safety considerations, a backstop for a technology that’s becoming safer by the year but will continue to run into new situations on the road indefinitely. In a report also released Tuesday, Senator Markey said the new details were not enough. “Every autonomous-vehicle company refused to disclose how often their AVs require assistance from [remote assistants]—hiding key information from the public about their AV’s true level of autonomy,” …