We deliver to Europe! | E-Mail: info@omtec.de | Contact form

Part 16, April 23, 2021 - Disengagement report

Part 16, April 23, 2021 - Disengagement report (Reading time: 3 minutes)

The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is known not only for approving spacy license plates. For an extra $49, anyone can have his “vanity plate”.

License_plate_californiaLicense plate of the legendary DeLorean, a car modified to a time machine, which – along with Christopher Lloyd (“Doc Brown”) and Michael J. Fox (“Marty McFly”) – became the third headliner in the 1980s movie series “Back to the Future”. Image: www.motorbiscuit.com

The DMV is also generous in issuing licenses for testing autonomous vehicles on public roads. In return, DMV requires AI-car developers to submit an annual report on the number of miles driven autonomously, and how often drivers felt compelled to take a hand in the vehicles' AI: the number of “disengagements”.

The less frequent disengagements are, the more autonomously the vehicle does act, that’s the simple conclusion. Few disengagements on long distances means reliable image processing software for recognizing and interpreting the environment and making smart decisions. The disengagement statistics could serve as an indicator for the learning and training levels of vehicle AI.

Last year, Google's sister “Waymo” won the first place in DMV statistics: only 21 disengagements in more than a million autonomously driven kilometers. General Motors offshoot “Cruise” was second and “AutoX” (having groups of companies in background, including Alibaba and Fiat-Chrysler) took third place. Traditional car companies such as Mercedes and Toyota, with over 1000 disengagements each on relatively few kilometers, only got rearmost ranks.

DisengagementThe bar chart shows the distances autonomously driven in 2020, divided by the numbers of disengagements. DMV figures have been converted from miles to kilometers and rounded.

Most criticized: DMV does not verify the companies’ information. After all, DMV doesn't put up with everything: in 2019, Chinese manufacturer Baidu was suspected to have manipulated its data in a highly unacceptable manner. DMV and Baidu got into a dispute, Baidu refused to report in 2020 and does now risk lose its license. However, noted companies Tesla and Uber deny reporting to DMV, using – it hardly can be said otherwise – impertinent arguments.

The DMV disengagement statistics, above all, might brand corporate ethics and error management. Even on the positive side, when, for example, the drivers of Mercedes and Toyota, but also those of Apple, obviously list their disengagements meticulously and these are reported to the authorities then.

Questioning the DMV report is easy, but currently this survey is the best one available to the public. All the statistics, together with short explanations given by drivers for their disengagements, are downloadable as tables in csv format here.

Since 2018, Waymo has been allowed to operate test drives in California even without a human driver. Since then, DMV distinguishes between interventions by humans and unexpected situations that are recognized and handled by the vehicle AI. China and Germany (and assumably other countries too) provide test areas for autonomous driving as well. All of them include highways and public roads in cities and countryside.

Autonomous driving is being developed also on Industrial PCs from omtec.de. Our hardware – let's be honest – does not cause any disengagements!

Tags: KI

The fields marked with * are required.

Die Datenschutzbestimmungen habe ich zur Kenntnis genommen.