Waymo explains why its robotaxis got stuck during the SF blackout

Waymo is shipping a bundle update to assistance its robotaxis navigate disabled postulation lights during powerfulness outages “more decisively,” the institution said Tuesday successful a blog post that explains wherefore its self-driving vehicles got stuck astatine intersections during a blackout successful San Francisco this past weekend.

Waymo said the self-driving strategy successful its robotaxis dainty dormant halt lights arsenic four-way stops, conscionable similar humans are expected to. That should person allowed the robotaxis to run usually successful spite of the monolithic outage.

Instead, galore of the vehicles requested a “confirmation check” from Waymo’s fleet effect team to marque definite what they were doing is correct. All Waymo robotaxis person the quality to marque these confirmation checks. With specified a wide-spread outage connected Saturday, determination was a “concentrated spike” successful these confirmation requests, Waymo said, which helped make each the congestion caught connected video.

Waymo said it built this confirmation petition strategy “out of an abundance of caution during our aboriginal deployment” but that it is present refining it to “match our existent scale.”

“While this strategy was effectual during smaller outages, we are present implementing fleet-wide updates that supply the [self-driving software] with circumstantial powerfulness outage context, allowing it to navigate much decisively,” the institution wrote.

The bundle update volition adhd “even much discourse astir determination outages” to the company’s self-driving software. Waymo besides said it volition amended its exigency effect protocols by “incorporating lessons from this event.”

While a batch of absorption has been placed connected the instances wherever Waymo’s robotaxis got stuck during the powerfulness outage, the institution shared that its vehicles “successfully traversed much than 7,000 acheronian signals connected Saturday.”

“Navigating an lawsuit of this magnitude presented a unsocial situation for autonomous technology,” the institution wrote.

Saturday’s messiness is the latest illustration of however Waymo is inactive uncovering unforeseen issues with its bundle and its attack to designing a reliable fleet of self-driving vehicles. The institution already had to vessel aggregate bundle updates to marque its robotaxis hold for stopped schoolhouse buses, which prompted a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration probe and led to a recall.