Zoox Update: Amazon's Self-Driving Cars Get Smarter After SF Incident
Hey, so you know how Amazon has that self-driving car thing, Zoox? Well, they just put out another update for their software.
Apparently, it helps the cars be better at spotting people walking nearby and, like, not moving if someone's really close. This all happened after a lil' oopsie in San Francisco earlier this month.
They actually had to do a recall, which covers about 270 of their self-driving rides. Zoox told the folks at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about it Thursday.
So, what went down? Back on May 8th, someone on an electric scooter was turning kinda slowly at an intersection in San Francisco and bumped into an empty Zoox robotaxi. The person on the scooter got some minor cuts and fell near the car. Then, the car started to move a tiny bit before stopping, thankfully not hitting the scooter person again.
Because of that, Zoox actually stopped testing their cars on the road for a bit to figure things out.
They said this new software update is supposed to fix a problem where the cars might not notice someone nearby, especially if the car is stopped, moving super slow, or about to start moving. They said in some rare cases, the car could start going again without realizing someone is still right there.
Zoox paused all their driverless car tests after the incident. Then they rolled out the software update and did a bunch of testing, like in simulations. They said they started testing on the road again last week.
Oh, by the way, all these cars are owned by the company. You can't actually buy one yet.
Zoox has been testing these self-driving cars on regular roads since 2023 in places like California and Nevada. Last year, they even started testing in Florida and Texas. Now, you can see their test cars in the Bay Area, which includes San Francisco, plus Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle, Austin, and Miami.
Remember how I mentioned another recall earlier this month? Yeah, Zoox did another software recall for the same 270 driverless cars after an empty robotaxi got into a fender bender with a regular car in Las Vegas back on April 8th.
And just in April, the NHTSA closed their look into 258 of Zoox's cars about a braking issue. That happened after Amazon's robotaxi unit did a recall to update their software for that problem.
It seems like they're working through the kinks, right? What do you think about all this self-driving car stuff? It's kinda wild!
