this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
441 points (98.7% liked)

Technology

73876 readers
3352 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
L4s@hackingne.ws
441
Waymo issued a recall after two robotaxis crashed into the same pickup truck (www.engadget.com)
submitted 2 years ago by GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
105 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Last year, two Waymo robotaxis in Phoenix "made contact" with the same pickup truck that was in the midst of being towed, which prompted the Alphabet subsidiary to issue a recall on its vehicles' software. A "recall" in this case meant rolling out a software update after investigating the issue and determining its root cause.

In a blog post, Waymo has revealed that on December 11, 2023, one of its robotaxis collided with a backwards-facing pickup truck being towed ahead of it. The company says the truck was being towed improperly and was angled across a center turn lane and a traffic lane. Apparently, the tow truck didn't pull over after the incident, and another Waymo vehicle came into contact with the pickup truck a few minutes later. Waymo didn't elaborate on what it meant by saying that its robotaxis "made contact" with the pickup truck, but it did say that the incidents resulted in no injuries and only minor vehicle damage. The self-driving vehicles involved in the collisions weren't carrying any passenger.

After an investigation, Waymo found that its software had incorrectly predicted the future movements of the pickup truck due to "persistent orientation mismatch" between the towed vehicle and the one towing it. The company developed and validated a fix for its software to prevent similar incidents in the future and started deploying the update to its fleet on December 20.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Aatube@kbin.social 31 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Why is an update called a recall?

[–] twack@lemmy.world 20 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Because Tesla was fixing significant safety issues without reporting it to the NHTSA in a way that they could track the problems and source of the issue. The two of them got into a pissing match, and the result is that now all OTA's are recalls. After this, the media realized that "recall" generates more views than "OTA", and here we are.

[–] Dlayknee@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

I think it's slightly more nuanced - not all OTAs are recalls, and not all recalls are OTAs (for Tesla). Depending on the issue (for Teslas), the solution may be pushed via an OTA in which case they "issue a recall" with a software update. They're actually going through this right now. For some other issues though, it's a hardware problem that an OTA won't fix so they issue a recall to repair the problem (ex: when the wiring harness for their cameras was fraying the cables).

This is 100% from the NHTSA shenanigans, though.

[–] Chozo@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago

The fleet of cars is summoned back to the HQ to have the update installed, so it causes a temporary service shutdown until cars are able to start leaving the garage with the new software. They can't do major updates over the air due to the file size; pushing out a mutli-gigabyte update to a few hundred cars at once isn't great on the cellular network.

[–] Kbobabob@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What typically happens when a recall is issued for other vehicles? Don't they either remove and replace the bad part or add extra parts to fix the issue?

How is removing bad code and replacing it with good code or just adding extra code to fix the issue any different?

Do you want to physically go somewhere?

[–] filcuk@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Kinda, as the word implies. If it's a software update, call it that; the car's not going back to the shop/manufacturer.

[–] Kbobabob@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

It sounds like location is important for some reason.

[–] ShepherdPie@midwest.social 1 points 2 years ago

What if you consider its the software/firmware getting recalled and not the vehicle itself? Then it's all perfectly cromulent.

[–] MNByChoice@midwest.social 1 points 2 years ago

They often are. Many recalls for other manufacturers are similar. They don't actually buy back the cars and crush them.