Robotaxi companies decline to say how often their AVs need remote assistance

In February, Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) sent letters to seven US companies working on autonomous vehicle technology with a list of questions. They wanted to know specifically how the companies’ cars – powered by Aurora, May Mobility, Motional, Nuro, Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox – rely on data from remote workers. They they both refused to sayaccording to the results of Markkey’s survey, which was released on Tuesday.

The news release from Markey’s office is the latest example of how autonomous car companies are reluctant to share details about how their services work — even as they all test the technology on public roads.

“This report has shown that the AV companies are not very transparent in terms of how they use (remote assistants) to help them guide their AVs. The study showed that there are several ways to protect safety in all companies, and there is a huge difference in the qualifications of drivers, response time, and external workers, all without federal policies that regulate these services,” Markey’s office wrote in its report.

Mr. Markey said Tuesday that he is calling on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to investigate the companies’ use of remote operators, and that he is “working on legislation to impose stricter regulations on AV companies that use remote operators.”

TechCrunch has reached out to each company mentioned. Waymo declined to comment. The other six did not immediately respond.

Markey launched his investigation in February after a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the future of self-driving cars. During the hearing, Waymo’s chief security officer Mauricio Peña spoke about how the company’s vehicles sometimes need guidance from “remote” operators when they encounter problems or the unexpected. Peña also revealed that nearly half of Waymo’s remote workers live in the Philippines.

Independent car companies have talked about these types of remote assistance in terms of startups for years. But the discussions were mostly speculative, as the technology was either speculative or deep in experimentation.

Now that many of these companies have sold robotaxis or, in Aurora’s case, self-driving cars, interest in their work has grown.

After the trial, Mr. Markey sent letters to the seven companies to find out more about their remote services. His office asked each company 14 questions, including how many remote workers control autonomous vehicles, how many of these groups are there, where they are located, how they are licensed, and what types of security are in place.

Industry solutions – which you can read in full Here – very diverse. Neither directly responded to the question of how often their remote workers are given guidance on AVs, Waymo and May Mobility clearly state that this is “business confidential.” Tesla did not include the question in its response letter. It’s unclear why, and the company disbanded its North American communications team years ago.

Waymo said in its letter that the change in management has “reduced” the number of support requests per kilometer that its vehicles send to remote workers, but did not provide information or evidence. The company wrote that “many of the requests” its robots send to remote workers are processed by an automated system “before the operator can provide a response.”

Waymo was also the only company to accept the use of remote assistants. Although the company says it makes sure its employees have local driver’s licenses, Markey’s office wrote Tuesday that “a foreign driver’s license is not a substitute for passing the U.S. driver’s license test, as traffic laws definitely vary by location.”

All companies except Tesla said they either don’t allow or don’t have the ability for remote operators to directly control autonomous vehicles. Tesla, meanwhile, said remote workers are “allowed to monitor vehicles temporarily as a last resort to continue all other operations.”

Tesla said that this can happen if the pilot car is traveling at a speed of 2 kilometers per hour or less, and that the remote control cannot drive the car faster than 10 kilometers per hour.

“This ability allows Tesla to quickly move a vehicle that may be involved in a malfunction, thereby reducing the need to wait for a first responder or Tesla field representative to recover the vehicle,” the company wrote to Markey’s office.

This has been a recent criticism of Waymo, who has faced it tough questions from San Francisco city officials at a meeting this month about its reliance on first responders to move sticky robotaxis. Waymo has its own dedicated team of “on-the-road agents” that are separate from remote partners, such as TechCrunch recently explained. But this part of Waymo’s operation was not the focus of Markkey’s investigation.

Markey’s office did some research from these companies. His report shows the delay involved in remote collaboration (it varies for each company, with May Mobility reporting the longest figure of 500 milliseconds), how some of these companies try to keep these workers from getting tired, and what measures they take to protect the data they manage.

These are questions that freelancers have been grappling with for years, and the answers aren’t always easy to come by. But with so many commercial projects looming, Markey’s office won’t be the last to ask for — or want — information.