Summary

Aicha Evans is the CEO of an autonomous vehicle company called Zoox. In this TED Talk, Evans talks about her perspective on the future of self-drive cars. Her arguments include:

Individually owned cars (including self-drive cars) are a wasteful expense and contribute to pollution and traffic congestion in urban areas. 

The downside to the much-touted self-driving shuttles is that they are designed for mass movement and usually cannot take you directly from point A to B.

Robotaxis are the solution because they can take you specifically from point A to point B. As well, they can help solve traffic congestion because each robotaxi could replace dozens of personal vehicles.

The technology (cameras and algorithms) that run self-drive vehicles cannot yet match the human brain’s ability to understand and interpret the environment. So, from a safety perspective, the technology isn’t quite there yet.

Due to the endless number of scenarios for drivers, Evans’ company is using computer simulation to construct millions of different scenarios in a fabricated environment to see how the software reacts. 

Once the software is perfected and self-drive vehicles are commonplace, Evans claims the number of vehicle accidents will drop dramatically.

There’s still a way to make autonomous robotaxis safe and reliable every time they take to the road, but Evans believes we’re on the cusp of making that happen. Transcript available here. 

 

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