Gaining your trust next test for driverless cars
Waymo outfitted vehicles with all-new technology for Phoenix passenger pilot
SAN FRANCISCO— For years, the Google coders and roboticists working on driverless cars have focused on making sure their creations could drive safely around California roads.
Now comes the next big test: getting regular civilians comfortable passing the wheel to a machine.
This month, Waymo, the mobility division created by Google parent Alphabet Inc., is starting a free, experimental service that will ferry people around Phoenix, Ariz.
In preparation, Waymo has added a new suite of hardware and interior designs to its cars, revealed here for the first time, which will help the vehicles see their surroundings better and transmit that information to their occupants. The project’s technology chief Dmitri Dolgov says the upgrades will ease passengers’ concerns.
This is no small matter. While driverless cars have demonstrated a remarkable ability to navigate a complex world, every hiccup makes news. Google vehicles have been involved in several fender benders and a Tesla Model S operating in Autopilot mode crashed into a semi-trailer, killing the owner.
The test will be watched closely by the tech and auto industries; a sour experience could turn off consum- ers, many of whom are skeptical of autonomous vehicles.
“They don’t trust that the technology is going to work100 per cent of the time,” says Kathy Rizk, director of Global Automotive Consulting at J.D. Power, which has conducted surveys showing that while consumers are enthusiastic about driverless cars, they remain wary. “How do you put your trust in something that’s going to take over the entire vehicle?”
Waymo originally planned to study human-robot interactions with its own concept car — a round, pintsized vehicle code-named Firefly that maxed out at 40 kilometres per hour and lacked a steering wheel and pedals. But California regulators insisted that the test vehicles must include controls so a human could take over.
Waymo has since cut a deal with Fiat Chrysler to use tricked-out Pacifica minivans with all the usual controls that are now cruising around Phoenix. Waymo employees will keep watch in the driver’s seat during the test.
Waymo believes regulators will eventually green-light fully autonomous cars without the means for a human to take control. As a result, it may be necessary for the car to tell passengers what it’s doing (suddenly slowing down, say) and explaining why (because a dog ran into the street).
“How do people control the car? How do they tell the car where they want to go?” Dolgov asks rhetorically. “Some of those more subtle things — explaining those to the user, to the customer, to the passenger — is what we’ve been working on.”
Waymo has recruited several managers who worked on user design with popular Google products like Chrome and Android. This month, the company also hired a “user experience” researcher, who is supposed to help make passengers’ time in the cars “intuitive, accessible, fun — and even magical.”
In a mock-up viewed by Bloomberg, a special dashboard displayed nearby cars, pedestrians and buildings — an effort to give people confidence that the car is competent and in control. Some nearby cars were lit up, if they were relevant to the situation. Others were shown less prominently.
The message: Don’t worry, the sys- tem sees the cars and understands which ones to track. Knowing buildings are there isn’t critical, but showing them in outline helps orient passengers in the world. And when the vehicle yields to make a turn at a green light, the words “waiting for intersection to clear” appear. (The company stresses the design isn’t final.)
Since Waymo was spun out of Alphabet’s X lab in December, it has thrown resources and talent at the hardware underpinning its autonomous vehicles. The division has hired aggressively, including several engineers from Terra Bella, the satellite division Google sold earlier this year, according to a person familiar with the situation. Waymo has also hired a number of reliability engi- neers from Tesla, a Waymo spokesperson confirmed.
Still, Dolgov knows better than to be overconfident. The company held a very limited trial of its vehicles in Phoenix for two months and quickly found itself grappling with dust storms.
“We’re in the learning phase,” he says.
Google has a history of rosy forecasts for fully self-driving cars, which some analysts say are still decades away.
The company is also known for designing products with little idea of how they’ll be received. Some became huge successes (Gmail); others didn’t (Google Glass).
Waymo is acutely aware of this history, which may explain why it has taken so long to get a driverless service up and running.
Competitive pressure may have forced its hand. Uber Technologies Inc., locked in a court battle over allegations it stole Waymo technology, has started its own self-driving tests in several cities.
Tesla Inc. is aggressively expanding the Autopilot feature across its model lineup. And, of course, major automakers are all hard at work on their own robot cars.
Still, persuading people to actually get in one of these vehicles with no human fallback will take some effort.
“The reality is that the technology will be safer,” says Chris Rockwell, the founder of user research firm Lextant. “That doesn’t necessarily get the passengers on board.”