An unknown technical downside brought about quite a lot of robotaxis owned by the Chinese language tech large Baidu to freeze on Tuesday in the midst of visitors, trapping some passengers within the automobiles for greater than an hour.
In Wuhan, a metropolis in central China the place Baidu has deployed a whole lot of its Apollo Go self-driving taxis, folks on Chinese language social media reported witnessing the vehicles all of the sudden malfunction and cease working. Images and movies shared on-line present the Baidu vehicles halted on busy highways, usually within the quick lane.
A school scholar in Wuhan tells WIRED that she was caught in a Baidu robotaxi with two buddies for about 90 minutes on Tuesday. (She requested to be solely recognized together with her final title, He, to guard her privateness.) The scholar says the automobile malfunctioned and stopped 4 or 5 occasions through the journey earlier than it will definitely parked in entrance of an intersection in japanese Wuhan. Fortunately, it was not a busy street, and the group was not in speedy hazard. The display screen show within the automobile requested the passengers to stay within the automobile with seatbelts on and wait for a corporation consultant to come back “in 5 minutes,” in keeping with a photograph He shared with WIRED.
He says it took about half-hour to succeed in a Baidu buyer consultant on the telephone. “They stored saying it will be reported to their superior. However they didn’t clarify what brought about [the outage] or tell us how lengthy we would have liked to attend for the workers to come back,” He says. However nobody ever got here, and after one other hour of ready, the three passengers determined to only get out and go dwelling by themselves (the doorways weren’t locked).
On Chinese language social media, different passengers additionally complained about being unable to succeed in Baidu’s buyer help. “I attempted each approach I may consider to name for assist utilizing the choices the app confirmed, however the telephone line wouldn’t undergo, and after I pressed the SOS button it instructed me it was unavailable. So then what precisely is the SOS for?” wrote one individual in a put up on RedNote alongside a video exhibiting the button not working. She stated she needed to drive the door to open and get out of the automobile as visitors halted to an entire cease behind her robotaxi. “Apollo Go, you actually owe me an apology,” she wrote.
Baidu didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. Native police in Wuhan issued a press release round midnight in China that stated the state of affairs was “probably brought on by a system malfunction,” however the incident continues to be underneath investigation. Nobody was injured, and all passengers have exited the automobiles, the police added. It’s unclear what number of of Baidu’s robotaxis could have been impacted.
One dashcam recording posted to RedNote exhibits a automobile passing 16 Apollo Go automobiles parked on the street within the span of 90 minutes. On a number of events, the video exhibits the motive force narrowly avoiding hitting the robotaxis by braking or altering lanes on the final minute.
Others have been apparently not as lucky. In one other RedNote put up, a person claimed he crashed into one of many malfunctioning Baidu automobiles. The person wrote within the caption that he was driving over 40 mph on a freeway when the automobile in entrance of him all of the sudden modified lanes to keep away from the stopped robotaxi. He couldn’t react quick sufficient and ended up working into the self-driving automobile. Images of the person’s orange SUV being towed away present that the automobile’s front-right fender was fully torn off, and different components appeared to have sustained main harm.
