Apollo Go Robotaxi de Baidu almost crashed during a trip, Rider said

• Sophia Tung rode in one of Baidu’s Robotaxi Apollo Go in Shenzhen, China.
• She told BI that the security driver had to deactivate the autonomous driving system during her trip.
• Assuming an Apollo Go was also a challenge, he said.

Apollo Go Robotaxi de Baidu almost crashed during a trip, which caused a security driver to deactivate the autonomous driving system, a pilot told Business Insider.

Sophia TungA San Francisco headquarters who documented his Robotaxi experiences on YouTube, visited Shenzhen, China, in December To take a walk in Baidu’s Robotaxi.

Baidu, the Chinese search engine giant, is one of the leaders of the Robotaxi race in China, since the country makes an aggressive impulse towards autonomy and electrification. Another upper competitor is They took place.

The company currently operates in 11 cities, including Wuhan, Shenzhen and Beijing. It is not clear which cities have vehicles that are totally autonomous or supervised by a human security driver.

Apollo Go has either publicly revealed the size of its Robotaxi fleet. The Baidu CEO, Robin Li, said in a profit call in August that the company has more than 400 robotaxis that operates in Wuhan, in which most vehicles are not manned and operate without “human security officers.”

Similar to the mosaic of state laws that regulate autonomous vehicles In the United States, companies like Baidu have to comply with different local government laws.

There are few publicly available data regarding the safety of the Apollo Go de Baidu. The company said in a May press release that “each autonomous vehicle is submitted to more than a thousand rigorous security tests. Before reaching the road, including hardware and software inspections, human interaction tests and compliance controls. “

In July, an incident that involved a pedestrian that was beaten by an Apollo Go went viral. The users of the social networks took the side of the autonomous vehicle, saying that the pedestrian was crossing when the light was green, Associated Press reported.

Tung told BI that his almost 9 mile trip was “very hard”, giving him a disease of his car, and that he feared that his experience ended in an accident when the autonomous vehicle merged into a lane that had another melted vehicle.

He published a YouTube video on January about his trip on an Apollo Go, titling it as a “nightmare experience.”

“Actually it was quite scary,” he told BI. “Honestly, I thought I was going to block.”

A Baidu spokesman refused to provide a comment on Tung’s experience for this story.

Greeting an Apollo Go

Advasing a Apollo Go Robotaxi was an obstacle in itself, Tung said.

The engineer said that the APOLLO application demanded that he present a form of government identification, in this case, his passport, before being able to reserve a walk. Other Chinese shared travel services such as Didi They also require a form of identification.

That is different from the US shared travel companies. Alphabet’s WaymoUber and Lyft, which do not require identification to use their services.

Booking the real trip was another challenge, he said.

Unlike most of the US shared travel services, in which users can establish their collection location, Apollo Go passengers are limited to the views designated within a given service area.

One of the collection points was at a taxi stop at a luxury shopping center near the Shenzhen Talent Park area, Tung said. She waited several hours before giving up and trying to take a walk the next day.

When trying to book a Robotaxi, Tung said the APOLL GO application provided inaccurate or useless data points.

For example, the application will tell a user how many people are in front of you, waiting for an Apollo, but the application will not say if those people were collected, Tung said.

The application also provided inaccurate estimated waiting times, he said.

“It gives you an estimated time,” Tung said. “But time is not correct. When the countdown reached zero, it is restored at 25 minutes.”

The next day, Tung said he spent almost four hours trying to take a Apollo Go.

“I felt very relieved when I finally got a car, because it has literally been an absolute nightmare trying to even get one,” he said.

A close call

When a Robotaxi stopped until Tung’s location, he was immediately surprised to see a human security driver inside the vehicle.

Waymo used security controllers when they were testing their robotaxis to a limited group before implementing the service to the public. The security drivers were present in the event that the autonomous system should be disconnected.

“At least in Shenzhen, there are videos of people who take Apollo Go without a security driver, which I thought would be the case,” Tung said.

Tung said the trip began with a “super abrupt beginning”, since the car accelerated hard and made round trip fuses between multiple lanes.

Tung compared the Apollo to go to an earlier version of The complete driving of Tesla supervised system, which requires constant supervision of a human conductor.

Throughout the trip, Tung documented in his video how the autonomous driver stopped hard or changed between lanes without indicating a lane change.

During those moments, Tung said the human driver did not spoke or react to abrupt movements.

That changed when Apollo Go later made an attempt to merge two lanes.

Tung said the driver deactivated the autonomous driving when the Apollo goes and another vehicle tried to merge into the same lane.

The Tung video shows the security driver to grab the wheel and manually conducts the car at a certain distance before participating again the autonomous driving system.

“I am quite sure that if the security driver had not really grabbed the steering wheel and stopped him, he would have met the car that was approaching,” Tung said.

In another incident minutes later, the security driver could be seen in the Tung video to reach the steering wheel, seeing to prepare to deactivate the autonomous driver to avoid a bus that stopped in the outermost right lane.

During the trip, the Tung video also showed that the Apollo is wrongly identified from the objects and brands of the road in its surroundings sometimes.

For example, pedestrians who walked through a crosswalk were exhibited on the monitor as cars. At another time, the Robotaxi would detect a danger cone on the road when there were no objects, Tung said in the video.

Improvement margin

Tung told BI that Apollo Go user’s general experience, from application to the trip, could be improved.

While the car itself was comfortable enough, Tung said the driving experience was difficult.

“I think the biggest thing about Apollo is the real control of the car,” he said. “It is simply not great.”

Tung pointed out that this was his only trip on an Apollo Go and that it would be curious to try the vehicle in other service areas such as Wuhan.

“I will not yet completely cancel,” he said.