Hacker News Reader

Comment by yardie | Hacker News Reader

It appears these robotaxis need an emergency button similar to the ones on industrial robots. But instead of completely stopping, a remote operator immediately takes over and bugs out. Meanwhile, the AI can take a backseat and observe how to respond in a situation like this. Because obviously they don't have enough training when dealing with emergency situations.

View on HN

The closest I've come to this scenario is playing games (eg CSGO) where you can take over a bot. So often, I take over a bot (without spectating their play first) and immediately die because I have no context for their situation and they're about to be shot at; in many of those situations I feel there bot would have done better than I did.

This makes me feel a human operator probably would be no good at taking control ... however a computer that has access to more data (eg data from other vehicles), or that has more control (of other vehicles, of traffic lights, of pedestrian crossings, etc.) or more capabilities, might be far more successful than a person?!

Ehhh I think you give too much credit to CSGO bots.

I don't see how the situation is similar. The robotaxi is parked in front of you, you connect to it and move it away. The entire context is right there.

well honestly, if we're saying that the person being inconvenienced is the one who gets to take control, there's probably gonna be a lot of angry people driving these cars off of bridges or into ditches or something. Giving an incredibly frustrated person control of a separate car, though better for context, is probably worse for desired outcome.

How about the robotaxi company driving in respect to regulations and other's property, then we wouldn't have this discussion. Oh, it's technically not possible? Well, then don't drive them.

That is not an adequate solution. During major public safety incidents, cellular data networks frequently go down or at least suffer from serious lag.

The article mentions that employees can take remote control over the cars but sometimes that’s not enough to fix the issue.

I think in case of an emergency the doors of the car should get unlocked and someone nearby should overtake

That's a good way to make carjacking easy.

Kia and Hyundai have already made that trivial the past few years. At least with the tender to their provider and GPS the robot taxis should be recoverable and disableable.

- Get carjacked - Car enabled carjacking mode - Locks all doors, locks manual controls, drives directly to the first SFPD station.

Maybe they should institute the emergency foam filling system to protect the occupants as well

Excellent idea. You inspire joy joy feelings in those around you.

maybe instead of adding even more complexity to solve the issues our solutions are creating, we could wait until we have solutions that don't create huge issues. What happens if the thing locks all the doors and manual controls and then drives off a bridge? Or if it's caught fire. Personally I'm barely okay with taking planes, if there was a car that could, at any moment, turn into a prison cell I'm not going near one of those things as long as I live. Even if they say they've disabled the "feature". Do we really trust these corporations with our lives so much that we're willing to get perma-locked into their test vehicles?

I feel like you could have some sort of standard handle on the front of a robotaxi to lead it around.

Idk I think I agree with the chief here that they're not ready for primetime if we're suggesting we put a halter and lead rope on an autonomous vehicle.

the elites don't want you to know but the robotaxis in san francisco are free you can take them home i have 458 robotaxis

Maybe a game controller gets unlocked from the back of the front seat so the passenger can take over GTA style

Reply on news.ycombinator.com