Ford Engineers Can’t Stay Awake in Driverless Cars

Snoozing engineers seem to be among Ford’s biggest problems in its quest to develop self-driving vehicles, so much so that the automaker wants to take humans out of the equation completely by removing the steering wheel and pedals from their driverless cars debuting in 2021.

The Detroit-based company has tried many ways to keep its engineers alert during autonomous car test runs, employing everything from alarm bells and lights to even putting a second engineer in the vehicle to monitor their counterpart. “No matter — the smooth ride was just too lulling and engineers struggled to maintain ‘situational awareness,’” said Ford product development chief, Raj Nair.

Ford’s strategy of eventually removing the steering wheel and pedals from self-driving cars has ignited a debate between automakers on how to approach the development of Level 3 self-driving vehicles, or if Level 3 should even exist at all.

BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi will introduce semi-autonomous Level 3 vehicles next year that require human intervention within 10 seconds or the vehicle will slow to a stop in its lane. However, other automakers like Nissan and Honda have upcoming systems that give the driver 30 seconds to prepare and re-engage the vehicle or it will pull to the side of the road.

On the flip side, research from Swedish automaker Volvo shows that drivers at rest or distracted by electronics need two minutes before they can properly react and take over the vehicle. “And that’s absolutely impossible. That really rules out Level 3,” says Volvo Cars CEO. By aligning with Google/Alphabet’s self-driving research unit, Waymo, who made similar discoveries, Ford plans to skip Level 3 altogether. According to Waymo CEO John Krafcik, “Level 3 may turn out to be a myth,” and “Perhaps it’s just not worth doing.”

Last year, the U.S. Transportation Department adopted the Society of Automotive Engineers’ automated driving levels starting with Level 0, which requires constant human attention. Level 5 requires no assistance from humans while Level 3 is what the SAE terms “conditional automation,” where the human driver needs to respond to the vehicle’s request to intervene when necessary.

Most automakers believe that humans should assist the self-driving system in order to avoid a collision in complicated situations or emergencies. Others, like Ford and Volvo, deem that an inattentive and distracted human would only make the situation worse if asked to respond in seconds to a life-or-death situation.

What do you think? Should Level 3 self-driving vehicles allow distracted human drivers to respond, or should automakers skip that level completely and wait until more advanced systems that don’t need as much human intervention are ready? Tell us in the comments below.

Source: Automotive News (Subscription required)

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