Uber suspends robots after a crash

Photos from the scene. The Uber-based Robomobile collided with another car. The

robotic car developed by the Uber service had an accident last week,Bloomberg reports . The accident occurred on Friday evening local time in Tempe, Arizona.

According to a Tempe police spokesman, the Uber robotic is not to blame for the accident: he was not missed by another car. In the accident, no one was hurt. The Uber development incident was the most serious this year. The service had to suspend testing of its robotic vehicles on US roads until the end of the crash trial.

This is not the first incident involving autonomous vehicles. Last year, Tesla autopilot started the car at full speed under the wagon. As a result, the driver of an electric vehicle died - a well-known autonomous transport enthusiast and friend of Tesla Joshua Brown.

Then several factors became the cause of the accident at once, first of all, the fact that the truck was deployed and the autopilot system could not recognize it. At the same time, Tesla regularly denied the fault of the system: the autopilot is under development and is positioned as a driver assistance system, and not as a full autopilot. Accordingly, it can be used only if the driver is ready to intervene in the process of driving a car at any time.

As in the case of the Tesla autopilot, the Uber robot system is not completely autonomous . During test trips, the driver constantly has to intervene in the process of driving the car when the computer cannot cope with the situation on the road. The accident adds spice to the fact that Uber's romobiles are already being used to transport passengers. This time the car was empty and no one was hurt.

The accident of the rob-mobile Uber has done without human victims and occurred under other circumstances. Obviously, the cause of the accident was not the electronics error, but the human factor. Consequently, this incident is unlikely to affect the pace of development and the future of the Uber project.

In the past few years, various technology companies have been actively developing robotic vehicles. In addition to Uber, its direct competitor in this area is Lyft, technology giant Google, Tesla Motors. All developments are conducted on different platforms and pursue various economic goals. For Uber and Lyft, this is reducing costs, for Google - creating a new market, and for Tesla - developing a unique backup management system that increases the attractiveness and competitiveness of their product on the market. From domestic companies, KAMAZ is engaged in the development of autonomous vehicles along with Yandex .