Part of the challenge for AVs is technical, like it was for EVs and the original automobile. — Photo by Randy Tarampi on Unsplash
Artificial intelligence exploded onto the scene in 2023.
In Pittsburgh alone, companies used the generative technology to teach math, choose paint schemes and serve sushi.
Yet for the city's pioneer AI technology – autonomous vehicles – the story was a bit more complicated.
Carnegie Mellon University first piloted the autonomous "Terregator," short for "Terrestrial Navigator" in 1984. Thirty years later, however, the technology that many predicted would be ubiquitous has failed to hit the mainstream.
This fall, the city's most prominent founders pivoted to trucking, where fellow Pittsburgher and Aurora founder Chris Urmson has already made a name for himself.
Argo.ai's robotaxis still dot the city's marketing materials, advertising a hub for robotics prowess. Yet Pittsburgh was snubbed for a federal distinction as a "tech hub" in October – and the dream of a driverless society remains just that.
There have been inroads.
Just this month, two Pittsburgh companies earned Department of Defense contracts to build driverless trucks for the military. The only problem? Only one will win. And there's a third competitor from Maryland vying for the prototype crown.
Part of the challenge for AVs is technical, like it was for EVs and the original automobile.
But perhaps a greater challenge is one of public perception.
In October, General Motors' leading robotaxi model dragged a woman 20 feet in San Francisco, and to make matters worse, regulators said the company's subsidiary Cruise withheld footage of the accident – staining the company with a reputation that it will now spend millions to repair.
Mr Urmson has championed transparency – traveling to Washington to convince regulators to give his driverless trucks a shot.
But despite winning US$800mil (RM3.6bil) in startup fundraising this summer, Aurora has yet to face the blowback of a serious highway accident. Neither has Motional, a Boston-based startup that is currently the only driverless car company training on Pittsburgh's streets. Motional declined to let the Post-Gazette ride along during one of its test rides.
But anyone will be able to roll the dice in a Motional car in January, when the company plans to remove the safety drivers from its cars in Las Vegas.
Many AV companies pull the safety driver to show progress to investors, said Phil Koopman, a CMU professor who studies driverless technology. But that can have significant consequences.
"Once you pull out the driver, you're not testing, you're deployed," he said.
Mr Koopman and other experts believe GM moved too quickly – both in its PR and its testing.
But its competitors – Ford and Volkswagen – also spent years (and billions) investing in Argo.ai, hoping Pittsburgh's brightest would build a viable product. The carmakers were willing to test drive the technology on some of the toughest streets in the country: Pittsburgh's Downtown.
After disinvestment, dissolution and a fair bit of disillusion, Ford pivoted to a lower level of autonomy that is essentially a more capable cruise control. Volkswagen pivoted to driverless microbuses that are currently testing in Austin.
Companies developing driverless technology say that autonomy will eventually make streets safer. A computer is less likely to be distracted behind the wheel, the reasoning goes, and it can be trained on crash data from thousands of human collisions.
But it's not clear that the general public has the patience to weather gruesome accidents in pursuit of that safer future. After the October setback in San Francisco, General Motors suspended all testing and announced it would be scaling back funding to Cruise. The subsidiary's chief executive, Kyle Vogt, resigned.
"The entire industry is definitely paying very close attention to what happened there and using it as a learning experience," said Brian Kennedy, vice president of government affairs at the Pittsburgh Technology Council.
"This industry is only really going to be as strong as its weakest link." Test-driving transparency Under a 2021 standing general order, manufacturers and operators of automated driving systems must report crashes to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The agency recognises on its website that automation will eventually yield "far-reaching" advantages.
In the meantime, it is monitoring a database of incidents to identify trends.
That data fueled a two-year NHTSA investigation of Tesla that led the company to recall 2 million cars – nearly all of its vehicles on U.S. roads – in December over concerns related to its Autopilot and its Autosteer functions.
The country needs a national framework for AV regulation that moves beyond testing, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation argued in a Dec. 2022 report. Fred Perkins, chief engineer for the Center for Auto Safety, a Washington, DC think tank, said industry and government have yet to define a "safe" threshold for driverless technology.
"There are no government standards and there is no visibility into what the industry is doing," he said in an interview.
Mr Perkins recalled a separate Cruise incident in Austin where company employees covered an accident with a tarp.
"That's not visibility," he said. "That's not building public confidence." – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/Tribune News Service
