Bax+Towner/Cruise
Robotaxi firm Cruise will resume testing its self-driving taxi fleet in Phoenix, Arizona, but with a human driver in control and no autonomous driving mechanisms engaged. This follows a series of collisions in in San Francisco at the end of last year.
Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, was set up in 2013 to build a fleet of robotaxis with advanced self-driving technology to enable residents in city centres to take driverless trips.
Robotaxis’ appeal lies in offering transportation options for passengers who can’t drive, such as the elderly or the disabled, or have never learned.
Cruise began testing its robotaxis in San Francisco but, following incidents in October 2023 that saw a pedestrian run over by a Cruise taxi and another involving a collision with a fire truck, lawmakers in California banned Cruise from operating its vehicles in the state.
Six months on and Cruise, having paused its operations, slimmed down its workforce and seen the resignation of its CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt, has announced that it will resume testing of its robotaxis. This time, however, there will be a human driver behind the wheel.
A blog post on the company’s website stated that as it tries to rebuild trust in its driverless operations it is focusing on improving vehicle performance and its overall safety approach.
Its vehicles will continue to gather road data in select cities, starting with Phoenix, so as to feed its machine learning model. These vehicles will be human-driven without autonomous systems engaged and will not carry public passengers.
For its AI technology to gather and learn road information and different driving environments doesn’t necessarily require the vehicle to be driverless, the same information can be gathered with a human driver.
The company stresses that it still has its eyes on a driverless taxi operation, but that this is the best approach to take for now.
Following Phoenix, once trust has been built it will expand its efforts into other cities.
According to the blog post: “The first step is identifying high-fidelity location data for road features and map information like speed limits, stop signs, traffic lights, lane paint, right-turn-only lanes and more. Having current and accurate information will help an autonomous vehicle understand where it is and the location of certain road features.”
Following the incidents at the end of last year, Cruise has a long journey ahead of it to assuage residents that their vehicles are safe. It stated that “safety is the defining principle for everything we do and will guide our progress through this process.”
“Our goal is to earn trust and build partnerships with the communities such that, ultimately, we resume fully driverless operations in collaboration with a city.”
