Tesla Admits Remote Human Operators Control Its Self-Driving Cars

Tesla has admitted that its self-driving vehicles are sometimes operated by remote human workers, according to new documents released by Democratic Senator Edward Markey. Tesla's admission comes after Markey sent letters to seven companies working on autonomous vehicle technology with a list of questions. The Democrat leader specifically wanted to understand how often these companies' vehicles, operated by Aurora, May Mobility, Motional, Nuro, Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox, rely on input from remote staff.

Responding to the letter, Karen Steakley, director of public policy and business development at Tesla, stated that remote workers can help when a rider or the car's autonomous driving system requests assistance. The company said its remote assistance operators are in-house employees who work at centres in Austin and Palo Alto, California.

"As a redundancy measure in rare cases, however, Remote Assistance Operators (RAOs) are authorised to temporarily assume direct vehicle control as the final escalation manoeuvre after all other available intervention actions have been exhausted," Steakley wrote, as per The Independent.

"This capability enables Tesla to promptly move a vehicle that may be in a compromising position, thereby mitigating the need to wait for a first responder or Tesla field representative to manually recover the vehicle," she added.

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After the revelation, Markey said he was calling on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to investigate these companies' use of remote assistance workers.

"This report has revealed a stunning lack of transparency from the AV companies around their use of [remote assistance operators] to help guide their AVs. The investigation exposed a patchwork of safety practices across the industry, with significant variation in operator qualifications, response times, and overseas staffing, all without any federal standards governing these operations," Markey's office wrote in its report.

Tesla's admission comes in the backdrop of Waymo, an autonomous ride-hailing service, admitting last month during a congressional hearing that the company relied on an army of "remote assistant operators" in the Philippines who are tasked with helping vehicles when they are stuck somewhere.