is transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.
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Waymo defended its use of remote assistants for its robotaxis after the testimony of one of its top executives during a Senate hearing went viral. In a letter to Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) on Tuesday, Waymo’s head of global operations Ryan McNamara provided a detailed description of the company’s remote assistance operations, including the number of employees based overseas.
Waymo employs approximately 70 “remote assistance agents,” with half based in the US and the other half in the Philippines, McNamara said. These agents “provide advice only when requested by the [automated driving system] on an event-driven basis,” the letter states. “Waymo’s [remote assistance] agents provide advice and support to the Waymo Driver but do not directly control, steer, or drive the vehicle.”
“Waymo’s [remote assistance] agents provide advice and support to the Waymo Driver but do not directly control, steer, or drive the vehicle.” — Waymo’s head of global operations Ryan McNamara
Waymo has been on the defensive after numerous outlets reported on the Senate testimony as if the company had revealed some terrible secret about its robotaxi operations. During the hearing, Markey pressed Mauricio Peña, Waymo’s chief safety officer, about the use of remote assistants, asking whether any of these workers were based overseas. “The Waymo phones a human friend for help,” Markey said during the hearing, adding that the vehicle communicates with a “remote assistance operator.”
Peña’s response that some agents were stationed in the Philippines then went viral, as numerous news publications and social media accounts mischaracterized his statement as meaning the vehicles were being controlled by remote drivers overseas.
But in his letter, McNamara says these agents do not control the vehicle, nor are they passively watching the live video feeds from the robotaxi cameras in case anything goes wrong. “Rather, the ADS reaches out to Remote Assistance when the vehicle encounters an ambiguous situation in which it may benefit from more context, even if the ADS can confidently proceed — a helpful safety redundancy,” he writes, adding that these interactions “typically last only seconds.”
Waymo’s remote assistants in the Philippines are all licensed drivers, English speakers, and have passed drug screenings, McNamara assures Markey: “These agents are provided extensive training tailored to the specific tasks they will complete and their performance is closely monitored, and despite never remotely driving the vehicles, are trained on local road rules.” He also claimed that latency between the vehicle and the assistant is insignificant, presenting it as “approximately 150 milliseconds for US-based centers and 250 milliseconds for [remote assistance] based abroad.”
Waymo’s letter to Sen. Markey includes this chart describing its remote assistance operation. Image: Waymo
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