"The robotaxi biz was a focal point of the power outages at Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), with videos circulating online of its self-driving cars plonked in the middle of the city's busy roads, unresponsive due to traffic signal failures. The company responded by saying its fleet is programmed to treat disabled signals as four-way stops, but "the scale of the outage and the sheer number of disabled traffic lights" led to cases where its cars remained stationary for longer than usual."
"It said that, in cases where its cars have to decide how to proceed through a dark intersection, it may send an additional request back to Waymo HQ for confirmation that its decision is the correct one. The scale of the outage prompted a spike in these requests, which created a backlog that, in turn, led to delays. The updates being rolled out now include those that Waymo said would improve its cars' decisiveness when navigating dark intersections by sending additional context around regional outages."
Waymo is deploying fleet updates to reduce disruption from power outages that disable traffic signals. The company's vehicles treat disabled signals as four-way stops, but a large outage in San Francisco overwhelmed confirmation protocols and left cars stationary while hazards blinked and human drivers navigated around them. The fleet successfully navigated more than 7,000 dark traffic signals on December 20, yet the outage caused a spike in verification requests to Waymo HQ, creating a backlog and delays. Updates will provide regional outage context, refine confirmation protocols for scale, and improve incident preparedness and response capabilities.
Read at Theregister
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]