Remote control tech could be key to advance autonomous driving, WeRide CEO says

After 10 years in academia, Tony Han Xu gave up a coveted tenured position as an associate professor at the University of Missouri two years ago to pursue a new path – becoming an entrepreneur.

Photo credit: Steve Roe / Unsplash

Following close to a decade of research in computer vision and deep learning, coupled with a stint as Baidu’s chief scientist for autonomous driving at a time when investors were chasing the industry, Han decided it was time to strike out on his own to build WeRide, a startup specializing in autonomous driving technology.

Today, WeRide is part of a group of Chinese startups, alongside Pony.ai and AutoX, hoping to eventually put driverless cars on the road for passengers by creating multisensor systems aimed at helping the cars drive themselves.

For Chinese companies like WeRide and Pony.ai, as well as US firms like Waymo, the holy grail is to reach Level 5 in autonomous driving, whereby a driverless car would be able to perform driving tasks in all environmental and road conditions the same way (or even better than) a human can.

The catch – achieving Level 5 could still be over 10 or even 20 years away, says 43-year-old Han.

“There are genuine challenges today – we still cannot really get a reliable machine to pass the Turing test,” said Han, referring to a test that assesses the ability of a computer to exhibit intelligent behavior that is indistinguishable from a human.

“We still need some breakthroughs, but [no one knows] when that breakthrough will happen. It could take a long time.”

But despite the challenges to complete automation in driving, Han is steadfast in his belief that driverless cars can still hit the road, thanks to teleoperations technology, which enables self-driving vehicles to be remotely controlled if necessary.

What sets WeRide apart from its competitors in China is that it is among the pioneers of teleoperations technology in the country. Last year, it worked with China Unicom to demonstrate the teleoperation of a driverless car over an ultra fast 5G network, making it the first company to do so on the next-generation network in China.

5G networks are expected to advance industries like autonomous driving and the internet of things, thanks to massive capacity and speeds expected to be up to 10x faster than current 4G networks.

With teleoperations technology, a human operator will be able to oversee a fleet of autonomous cars remotely, stepping in when any of those cars encounter a situation in which they cannot navigate safely, said Han. At this point, the operator will be able to take over the car remotely to proceed.

This model will reduce the number of drivers needed to oversee driverless vehicles in today’s industry, says Han. Currently, most autonomous cars tested on the road in the US and China still require the presence of a safety driver – a human driver who is ready to take over if the autonomous driving system is befuddled by a complex road situation.

One such exception is Google’s Waymo, which last year received a permit to road test fully driverless cars (with no driver) in California, provided there are remote operators standing by.