San-Franciso, California-based Uber Technologies revealed the real reason behind why one of its self-driving vehicles hit and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. This fatal crash took place earlier in the current year.
As per the Companies’ words, a glitch was found in the car’s detection system which was the sole and major reason that the vehicle ignored the pedestrian; however, its sensors noticed her.
According to the sources, the car was equipped with software that identifies which objects the vehicle should ignore and which it should react to. The software which was installed in the car wasn’t trained to react immediately enough that is what caused the accident.
Experts of this arena had known from the beginning that crash could not have been taking place by a defected sensor due to the extensive variety of vision systems connected to the autonomous vehicle. Yet, the car ignored Elaine Herzberg, the pedestrian who was crossing the Tempe’s street in front of its front-facing cameras.
Astonishingly, the vehicle didn’t even knock the brakes or respond in any other way after hitting the Elaine. The alternative Uber driver also didn’t react to the situation either until it was too late for the pedestrian to be saved.
Uber Finally admits that the car’s software was at fault
Before the peer-to-peer ridesharing Company acknowledged the fault of the software, many experts had various theories. Some of the experts believe that the ‘object recognition system’ was somehow failed to detect the woman as a pedestrian because she had a bike.
Another theory tells that the brain of the autonomous car failed to recognize the woman as a pedestrian. So the system couldn’t decide which object to hit and which should be ignored.
Uber’s identification system actually acts like a human brain when making decisions and also to prevent the vehicle from stopping at every, for example, let’s say, bicycle parked at the side of the road.
Uber confirmed to the second theory: the recognition system considered the woman pedestrian a false object and decided to just ignore her.
