A look into Tesla’s ‘Project Rodeo’, a risky autonomous driving test: Nate News

Tesla Full-Self Driving (FSD) driving [사진: 테슬라]

[디지털투데이 홍진주 기자] Tesla, which has been developing autonomous driving since 2013, is known to be running a test driver group called ‘Project Rodeo’. They test the performance of Tesla’s self-driving software by driving it themselves before it is released.

On the 31st of last month (local time), Business Insider interviewed nine current and former Project Rodeo test drivers and three autopilot engineers to take a closer look at the reality.

Interviewed drivers said they test autonomous driving in extreme environments to bridge the gap between software with driver assistance systems and fully autonomous driving. They reported that they tested the yet-to-be-released autonomous driving software not only on vehicles, but also on public roads for bicycles and pedestrians. It is said that in this process, there were often cases of exposure to dangerous situations.

A driver in San Francisco recalled that while training for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD), he tested how close the car could get to people at a crosswalk. At this time, it is said that he narrowly avoided an accident where he almost collided with a group of pedestrians.

“When I hit the brakes to avoid an accident, another more experienced test driver on the team reprimanded me,” he said. “I think the goal was to almost simulate a hit-and-run accident and then prevent the accident at the last minute.”

Tesla is testing its self-driving software on public roads before releasing it. [사진: 셔터스톡]

John Bernal, a former Tesla test driver and data analyst, also pointed out that test drivers often had to deal with dangerous situations in the past. “My training was to wait until the wheels touched the white line before I hit the brakes,” he said, adding that sometimes the system would stop in the middle of an intersection if it didn’t work properly.

According to a former Autopilot engineer, Tesla is testing new FSDs on public roads before launching them, but is also testing hundreds of simulations and difficult driving scenarios on closed courses.

The time spent driving a vehicle with autonomous driving was also important. “I had to last as long as possible in the self-driving car. I felt like a cowboy riding a bull,” said one driver on the “critical intervention” team, which is responsible for the main mission of Project Rodeo. . Tesla engineers explained that this is because the longer a car drives on its own, the more data it has to work with.

Experts’ perspectives on autonomous driving testing are mixed. While some experts believe that testing technology on public roads before putting it on the market can help identify safety issues, many others say it could endanger people’s safety.

“There are very few regulations related to autonomous driving testing, and most companies are self-reporting,” said Mark Rosekind, former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and chief safety officer at Zoox, Amazon’s self-driving subsidiary. “If companies don’t report, it’s hard to know what’s going on,” he said, adding that fragmented and limited autonomous vehicle regulation and self-reporting by automakers creates a complex environment for balancing public safety and readiness for commercial use. He said he would.