Robohub.org
 

California publishes robocar intervention reports: Google/Waymo vastly outpaces competition


by
08 February 2017



share this:

California published its summary of all the reports submitted by vendors testing robocars in the state. You can read the individual reports. They are interesting, but several other outlines have created summaries of the reports calculating things like the number of interventions per mile. On these numbers, Google’s lead is extreme. Of over 600,000 autonomous miles driven by the various teams, Google/Waymo was 97% of them — in other words, 30 times as much as everybody else put together.

Beyond that, their rate of miles between disengagements (around 5,000 — a 4x improvement over 2015) is one or two orders of magnitude better than the others, and in fact for most of the others, they have so few miles that you can’t even produce a meaningful number. Only Cruise, Nissan and Delphi can claim enough miles to really tell.

Tesla is a notable entry. In 2015 they reported driving zero miles, and in 2016 they did report a very small number of miles with tons of disengagements from software failures (one very 3 miles.) That’s because Tesla’s autopilot is not a robocar system, and so miles driven by it are not counted. Tesla’s numbers must come from small scale tests of a more experimental vehicle. This is very much not in line with Tesla’s claim that it will release full autonomy features for their cars fairly soon, and that they already have all the hardware needed for that to happen.

Unfortunately, you can’t easily compare these numbers:

  • Some companies are doing most of their testing on test tracks, and they do not need to report what happens there.
  • Companies have taken different interpretations of what needs to be reported. Most of Cruise’s disengagements are listed as “planned” but in theory those should not be listed in these reports. But they also don’t list the unplanned ones which should be there.
  • Delphi lists real causes and Nissan is very detailed as well. Others are less so.
  • Many teams test outside California, or even do most of their testing there. Waymo/Google actually tests a bunch outside California, making their numbers even bigger.
  • Cars drive all sorts of different roads. Urban streets with pedestrians are much harder than highway miles. The reports do list something about conditions but it takes a lot to compare apples to apples. (Apple is not one of the companies filing a report, BTW.)

One complication is that typically safety drivers are told to disengage if they have any doubts. It thus varies from driver to driver and company to company what “doubts” are and how to deal with them.

Google has said their approach is to test any disengagement in simulator, to find out what probably would have happened if the driver did not disengage. If there would have been a “contact” (accident) then Google considers that a real incident and those are rarer than is reported here. Many of the disengagements are when software detects faults with software or sensors. There, we do indeed have a problem, but like human beings who zone out, not all such failures will cause accidents or even safety issues. You want to get rid of all of them, to be sure, but if you are are trying to compare the safety of the systems to humans, it’s not easy to do.

It’s hard to figure out a good way to get comparable numbers from all teams. The new federal guidelines, while mostly terrible, contain an interesting rule that teams must provide their sensor logs for any incident. This will allow independent parties to compare incidents in a meaningful way, and possibly even run them all in simulator at some level.

It would be worthwhile for every team to be required to report incidents that would have caused accidents. That requires a good simulator, however, and it’s hard for the law to demand this of everybody.



tags: , , , , , ,


Brad Templeton, Robocars.com is an EFF board member, Singularity U faculty, a self-driving car consultant, and entrepreneur.
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com is an EFF board member, Singularity U faculty, a self-driving car consultant, and entrepreneur.





Related posts :



Livestream of RoboCup2025

  18 Jul 2025
Watch the competition live from Salvador!

Tackling the 3D Simulation League: an interview with Klaus Dorer and Stefan Glaser

and   15 Jul 2025
With RoboCup2025 starting today, we found out more about the 3D simulation league, and the new simulator they have in the works.

An interview with Nicolai Ommer: the RoboCupSoccer Small Size League

and   01 Jul 2025
We caught up with Nicolai to find out more about the Small Size League, how the auto referees work, and how teams use AI.

RoboCupRescue: an interview with Adam Jacoff

and   25 Jun 2025
Find out what's new in the RoboCupRescue League this year.

Robot Talk Episode 126 – Why are we building humanoid robots?

  20 Jun 2025
In this special live recording at Imperial College London, Claire chatted to Ben Russell, Maryam Banitalebi Dehkordi, and Petar Kormushev about humanoid robotics.

Gearing up for RoboCupJunior: Interview with Ana Patrícia Magalhães

and   18 Jun 2025
We hear from the organiser of RoboCupJunior 2025 and find out how the preparations are going for the event.

Robot Talk Episode 125 – Chatting with robots, with Gabriel Skantze

  13 Jun 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Gabriel Skantze from KTH Royal Institute of Technology about having natural face-to-face conversations with robots.

Preparing for kick-off at RoboCup2025: an interview with General Chair Marco Simões

and   12 Jun 2025
We caught up with Marco to find out what exciting events are in store at this year's RoboCup.



 

Robohub is supported by:




Would you like to learn how to tell impactful stories about your robot or AI system?


scicomm
training the next generation of science communicators in robotics & AI


©2025.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence


 












©2025.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence