The New York Times has a cool article up today about remote assistance at Zoox.
Remote assistance is mostly a quiet topic for autonomous vehicle companies. It refers to an umbrella of tools that humans in a remote operations center can use to help an autonomous vehicle.
Depending on the company, these remote assistance tools can include everything from fully driving the vehicle, to provide suggestions or information to the software stack, to bringing the vehicle to an immediate stop.
Zoox relies on guidance, but seemingly not full remote driving.
“We are not in full control of the vehicle,” said Marc Jennings, 35, a Zoox remote technician. “We are providing guidance.”
Here’s how the Times describes an encounter:
If a Zoox robot taxi encounters a construction zone it has not seen before, for instance, a technician in the command center will receive an alert — a short message in a small, colored window on the side of the technician’s computer screen. Then, using the computer mouse to draw a line across the screen, the technician can send the car a new route to follow around the construction zone.
And here’s a Zoox video on the topic.
David Silver 