奇速英语

真正的自动驾驶车可能永远离不开人工监管

Makers of self driving, or autonomous, vehicles have raised tens of billions of dollars based on promises to develop the fully robotic product. However, industry leaders and experts say the technology may forever require human supervision.

Supporters of autonomous vehicles, or AVs, say that computers and robotic technology will reduce the number of traffic accidents. But in reality, making self-driving cars safer than human-operated ones is complex. Self-driving programming lacks the human ability to predict and recognize risk quickly.

GM(通用汽车公司) recalled and updated software in 80 Cruise self-driving vehicles this month after a crash in June. Two people were injured in an accident. Safety officials said the recalled software could “incorrectly predict” an oncoming vehicle’s path. Cruise said its vehicles would not make the same mistake again after the update.

In 2018, GM sought the government approval for a fully autonomous car. It was to be marketed in 2019. But that vehicle, the Cruise Origin, now is not expected to begin production until spring 2023. In 2019, Tesla head Elon Musk promised 1 million robotaxis(自动驾驶出租车) would be in place by 2020. His company’s “Full Self Driving” feature has been criticized because its cars use human operators. In June, Musk said that building self-driving cars had been far more difficult than he had expected.

Many AV companies today use humans as remote piloting supervisors. They support self-driving cars in dealing with unexpected events on the road. Kyle Vogt is the head of Cruise. He says the company’s AVs on the roads currently depend on humans less than one percent of the time. But across thousands or even millions of AVs, that would add up to a large amount of time stopped on the road waiting for human guidance.

Autonomous systems are not as effective as people because their “perception and prediction algorithms(算法) are not as good as how a human brain processes and decides,” said expert Chris Borroni-Bird. That worries Borroni-Bird. “I am concerned that AV companies will rush to market without proving the safety is better than human-driven vehicles,” he said.