DETROIT: Google said on Tuesday the rate of software failures in its self-driving cars was declining as the technology was learning from its mistakes, bringing the tech company closer to its goal of fully autonomous vehicles.
In 682,361km of autonomous driving, Google said its cars had experienced 272 episodes in which the human test driver had to assume control of the vehicle, an occurrence called "disengagement", when the autonomous technology failed.
"As we continue to develop and refine the self-driving software, we are seeing fewer disengagements" despite more miles driven, Google said in a 33-page report submitted by law to the California Department of Motor Vehicles on Dec. 31.
California regulations call for test drivers and steering wheels in autonomous vehicles.
Google's development of self-driving cars has spurred outsized interest around the world, but the company best known for search has disclosed little about its strategy, business plans or ultimate goals.
Without the need to watch the road, people in cars will talk on phones, watch entertainment, purchase consumer goods, among many other options, providing valuable data to Google.
The report, covering the period Sept 24, 2014, when Google began testing on roads of Palo Alto, California, to Nov 30, 2015, found disengagements occurred about every 1,263km in the fourth quarter of 2014. A year later, that had expanded to 8,559km between episodes.
Eighty-nine percent of disengagements occurred on city streets, where more obstacles and stop-and-go traffic make autonomous driving more difficult.
Project director Chris Urmson said Google deliberately tests cars in different weather and times of the day, which explained why some months saw more episodes than others.
Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc, said it kept the threshold for measuring disengagements low to gather as much data as possible to refine the technology.
There were another 69 episodes in which the test driver chose to take control of the vehicle rather than the car signaling to the driver to take control.
Using a simulator to replay the situation, Google found in 13 of these instances its cars would have hit another object had the test driver not taken control. Google said two involved traffic cones, and three were due to "another driver's reckless behaviour." Urmson said the California DMV had not seen the report when it issued draft rules in December restricting how autonomous vehicles could operate for the next three years.
In a related development, Bloomberg reported that Google is aiming to form partnerships with many automakers and suppliers as it develops self-driving cars to reduce traffic accidents and expand mobility for elderly and disabled people, the head of its vehicle project said.
The Alphabet Inc. company wants to announce some of those joint efforts during 2016, John Krafcik, the Google executive, said in Detroit.
Almost every automaker “has been in to speak with us, if only to understand where we are,” Krafcik said. “I don’t know how many we’ll end up having.”
His comments counter speculation that Google would pick a single automaker as its exclusive partner for self-driving cars. Yahoo Autos reported last month that Ford Motor Co. would announce a joint venture with Google on self-driving. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV and General Motors Co. have also said they’re talking with Google about developing self-driving cars.
