The Uber report appears to rebuild goodwill with regulators

Uber has taken its biggest step yet against the resumption of testing autonomous cars after a fatal crash and publishes a long new report on safety work as it hopes to rebuild goodwill with regulators.

However, some critics say that the crash company still has a long way to go before the self-propelled cars are ready to share roads with human drivers.

While Uber admitted several failures in his security systems, technology and training regimes, Missy Cummings, Managing Director of Humans and Autonomy Laboratory at Duke University said the report lacked difficult data to back up the good intentions

The report was basically content-free in giving direct evidence, "she said." There is sufficient guard to keep them from revealing some true weaknesses. They really do not want any of their competitors to know where they are. "

The safety and secrecy ̵[ads1]1; of dozens of self-propelled auto-tests tested on American roads – has come under control after a Uber car struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona in March. Uber's cars have not run autonomously in public roadside side and the event has put more pressure on the company than others operating in a competitive area.

"A person died because Uber tested his vehicles under circumstances that seem to be irresponsible at best," said Bryant Walker Smith, Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina's law school, who regularly writes about autonomous driving. "This [report] is a good start. But Uber especially should go on. "

While the future of Uber's project has been in limbo, rivals, including Alphabet's Waymo, General Motors Cruise, and Zoox go ahead with self-propelled technology, aiming to launch robo taxi services.

Waymo, who has been working with driver vehicles for almost 10 years, became the first company to receive a license from the California Department of Motor Vehicles for tests without a person behind the wheel. [19659002] Ubers report recognized the gap between its own program and its competitors like Waymo , which ruled a bitter legal battle for claims about stolen technology earlier this year.

"Uber still develops a self-propelled system that can safely operate without a human operator behind the wheel," the company wrote. "As such, our system can not be able to deliver on some particular driving behavior today. "

The audience is now forced into an experiment without giving consent or even being aware of it.

659011] Even aspects of the autonomous systems that have been shown to work reliably will require "more testing, more variations, and potentially more development" before they go completely driverless, add it.

Prof Cummings said that it should not prevent Uber from providing more data about how well the systems can perform particular tasks, such as reaction time after identifying a danger or level of confidence to identify objects in what the company's report describes as " difficult and ambiguous situations ".

"It was not [Uber’s] Problem with the woman driving a bike across a road – she was not unclear, she was very predictable, she was very slow in motion," said Prof Cummings.

With no federal regulations on autonomous technology and a patchwork of state supervision have largely been left to companies that develop self-propelled cars to weigh the balances between security and the need to test their systems in real world situations.

"It's ours responsibility to ensure that we develop and distribute this technology in a manner that does not introduce unnecessary risks to the general public. We must be sure that our self-propelled system can operate safely on public roads long before it gets there, "Uber said in his safety report.

Noah Zych, chief of system security at the company's Advanced Technologies Group, admitted this week that Uber premature in the Arizona crash had backed up too much on backed up backups to take control of their autonomous system as problems occurred in public road tests . Among the changes that Uber has promised, it is more robust closed track testing before cars are allowed on the street.

He said that Uber was open to sharing more information about his approach to security. "Being secret and protecting what might have taken significant resources to develop is not of no use," he said.

Uber's report provides important recommendations, Walker Smith said, but added: "I wish it was more thorough and transparent."

Uber has applied for approval to test in Pennsylvania, where the autonomous project is based, under a voluntary program run by the State Transport Ministry.

The increasing number of self-propelled cars on public roads could accelerate demand for more systematic regulation, "said Sanjoy Baruah, an engineer at Washington University in St. Louis.

"There is a high probability that if testing on public infrastructure continues and other bad things happen, there will be a strong consensus for developing some standardization or documentation for safe practice in the industry," he said.

Public transportation under the right conditions, ultimately Ely will enhance the safety of autonomous technology, "said Prof Baruah, pointing out Waymo's plans to begin testing completely driverless cars near the Silicon Valley headquarters.

"Google has done a lot of mapping and data collection of the areas around its offices. These are cars that go out of idle mode in what's a relatively safe environment … because there's so much data. The risk is significantly lower and therefore, they can do more testing and the more experiments they make, the more effective are these systems. "

But Prof Cummings is concerned that California DMV does not provide adequate protection for other road users – for example, by requiring drivers without drivers clearly marked so that human drivers know that they share the road with experimental robots.

"The audience is now forced for an attempt" without giving consent or even being aware of it, "she said. "I think it's absurd."

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