Autonomous ride-hailing service Waymo made headlines last month after one of its executives explained during a Congressional hearing that the company relied on an army of “remote assistant operators” in the Philippines who are tasked with getting vehicles unstuck when they’re stumped.
The February hearing, convened by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, once again highlighted that despite their best efforts to make it seem like there is no human in the loop, companies like Waymo continue to rely on them for the most delicate moments during their operations — even if Waymo’s remote operators technically never take over control over the wheel, as a spokesperson took pains to clarify at the time.
Committee member and senator Ed Markey (D-MA) has led the charge for more transparency into the matter. As Wired reports, a series of letters he received from seven different robotaxi companies, including Tesla, Amazon’s Zoox, and Nuro, detail how humans remain a core part of their purportedly autonomous driving ambitions.
Tesla’s response stood out, revealing that its human operators do, in fact, temporarily take control of the vehicle if necessary. That’s in contrast to Waymo’s approach, which involves its team intervening to make higher-level decisions on where the stuck car should navigate next.
“As a redundancy measure in rare cases… [remote assistance operators] are authorized to temporarily assume direct vehicle control as the final escalation maneuver after all other available intervention actions have been exhausted,” director of public policy and business development Karen Steakley wrote in the letter.
The Tesla operators, who are based in either Austin, Texas, or Palo Alto, California, can “take temporary control of the vehicle,” but only at speeds of up to ten miles per hour.
“This capability enables Tesla to promptly move a vehicle that may be in a compromising position,” Steakley wrote.
Tesla’s autonomous ride hailing service in Austin has been under heavy scrutiny since launching last summer. In January, CEO Elon Musk claimed that the robotaxis drive “with no safety monitor in the car.” However, as Electrek reported at the time, Tesla appeared to have instead employed drivers to watch from a car that follows the robotaxis throughout their entire trip, presumably as a safety precaution.
The company’s latest admission didn’t impress Markey. He called Tesla’s refusal to share more specific information regarding how many takeovers occur “especially concerning,” since the remote workers “are permitted to teleoperate the vehicle.”
Steakley claimed in her letter that divulging such information “would necessarily reveal highly sensitive trade secrets and confidential business practices” that Tesla needs to maintain its “competitive position in the AV industry.”
As Wired points out, direct remote control comes with inherent risks, from network latency delaying signals and therefore the remote worker’s ability to react in real time to a lack of complete situational awareness.
George Mason University professor of engineering Missy Cummings told the publication that companies are incentivized to keep their remote assistance operations under wraps “because then it would make it clear how not-capable these systems really are.”
“If people understood how often [the assistants] were interacting, then it would be clear how far away truly autonomous vehicles are,” she added.
More on Tesla’s robotaxis: Tesla Robotaxis Crashing Vastly More Often Than Human Drivers
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