Uber self-driving vehicle accident that killed pedestrian blamed on software flaws
Uber's autonomous vehicles behind 37 crashes in the previous 18 months
The crash last year by one of Uber's self-driving test vehicles that killed a pedestrian has been blamed on software flaws by investigators in the US.
And the accident in Arizona was not a one-off - Uber self-driving vehicles had been involved in 37 prior crashes in the 18 months before the fatal accident in March 2018.
Emergency braking was not enabled for the vehicle while it was under computer control in order to prevent erratic behaviour
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has been investigating the accident. It is expected to make a series of recommendations to tighten-up regulation of the autonomous vehicle sector in response.
The preliminary report released overnight [PDF] indicates that the finger of blame will be pointed squarely at Uber and inadequacies in the company's self-driving vehicle software.
The full report will claim that the software failed to identify the pedestrian, 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, as a pedestrian until it was too late for the vehicle to stop in time. It will also suggest that the system took around one-second while it considered routing around the pedestrian, losing valuable braking time.
"Uber had equipped the test vehicle with a developmental self-driving system. The system consisted of forward- and side-facing cameras, radars, LIDAR, navigation sensors, and a computing and data storage unit integrated into the vehicle," according to the preliminary report issued this week.
The self-driving system software classified the pedestrian as an unknown object, as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle
It continues: "Uber had also equipped the vehicle with an after-market camera system that was mounted in the windshield and rear window and that provided additional front and rear videos,
along with an inward-facing view of the vehicle operator. In total, 10 camera views were recorded over the course of the entire trip."
The vehicle was also fitted with several of Volvo's own advanced driver assistance systems as well - including a collision avoidance system called City Safety.
The report implies that Uber blames the operator of the vehicle for failing to intervene in time.
"According to Uber, the developmental self-driving system relies on an attentive operator to intervene if the system fails to perform appropriately during testing. In addition, the operator is responsible for monitoring diagnostic messages that appear on an interface in the center stack of the vehicle dash and tagging events of interest for subsequent review."
The system first registered radar and LIDAR observations of the pedestrian about six seconds before impact
Because the pedestrian was pushing a bicycle, the self-driving software mis-categorised the pedestrian several times in the seconds leading up to the crash.
"The system first registered radar and LIDAR observations of the pedestrian about six seconds before impact, when the vehicle was traveling at 43 mph.
"As the vehicle and pedestrian paths converged, the self-driving system software classified the pedestrian as an unknown object, as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle with varying expectations of future travel path."
However, according to Uber, emergency braking was not enabled for the vehicle while it was under computer control in order to prevent erratic behaviour. "The vehicle operator is relied on to intervene and take action. The system is not designed to alert the operator."
The operator only intervened one second before impact by grabbing the steering wheel, while all diagnostics indicate that the self-driving system was operating normally.
"In a postcrash interview with NTSB investigators, the vehicle operator stated that she had been monitoring the self-driving system interface."
The NTSB will hold a board meeting on Tuesday 19th November to determine the probable cause of the crash.
The 49-year-old woman died when she was hit by the Uber self-driving test vehicle as she was walking a bicycle across Mill Avenue in Tempe, Arizona on 18th March 2018.
The test vehicle, a 2017 Volvo XC90 SUV controlled by an Uber Advanced Technologies Group developmental automated driving system, was occupied by one operator who was not injured in the crash.