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Cruise patches robo-taxi software to not drag humans across the road anymore
Cruise has pushed a handy update to its self-driving taxi fleet so that they will no longer drag pedestrians along the road after running them over.
The GM subsidiary submitted what is technically a recall notice [PDF] to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Tuesday, saying it needed to fix up the robo-vehicles' collision detection subsystem.
More specifically: the update is intended to make the onboard driving software better at realizing when the car's hit a person who is already down low or on the ground, and making sure the autonomous vehicle (AV) doesn't make the situation worse by pulling over and further injuring the victim.
"In certain circumstances, a collision may occur, after which the Collision Detection Subsystem may cause the Cruise AV to attempt to pull over out of traffic instead of remaining stationary when a pullover is not the desired post-collision response," the biz said in its notice.
"This issue could occur after a collision with a pedestrian positioned low on the ground in the path of the AV," Cruise added.
That's precisely what happened on October 2 in San Francisco, when a Cruise self-driving taxi, with no humans onboard, ran over a woman who had seconds earlier been knocked to the ground by a hit-and-run driver. The woman fell in front of the Cruise car, which drove over her, realized it hit something, and then tried to pull over to safely, dragging her along and stopping on top of her, trapping her.
In its recall notice referring to that accident, Cruise said its automated driving system "inaccurately characterized the collision as a lateral collision and commanded the AV to attempt to pull over out of traffic, pulling the individual forward, rather than remaining stationary."
The GM subsidiary submitted what is technically a recall notice [PDF] to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Tuesday, saying it needed to fix up the robo-vehicles' collision detection subsystem.
More specifically: the update is intended to make the onboard driving software better at realizing when the car's hit a person who is already down low or on the ground, and making sure the autonomous vehicle (AV) doesn't make the situation worse by pulling over and further injuring the victim.
"In certain circumstances, a collision may occur, after which the Collision Detection Subsystem may cause the Cruise AV to attempt to pull over out of traffic instead of remaining stationary when a pullover is not the desired post-collision response," the biz said in its notice.
"This issue could occur after a collision with a pedestrian positioned low on the ground in the path of the AV," Cruise added.
That's precisely what happened on October 2 in San Francisco, when a Cruise self-driving taxi, with no humans onboard, ran over a woman who had seconds earlier been knocked to the ground by a hit-and-run driver. The woman fell in front of the Cruise car, which drove over her, realized it hit something, and then tried to pull over to safely, dragging her along and stopping on top of her, trapping her.
In its recall notice referring to that accident, Cruise said its automated driving system "inaccurately characterized the collision as a lateral collision and commanded the AV to attempt to pull over out of traffic, pulling the individual forward, rather than remaining stationary."
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