> No guarantee of a timely response from remote operators or backend services.
> Therefore, all safety-critical decisions must be made by the onboard computer alone.
Why is the requirement that all safety-critical decisions must be made on board, versus the seemingly-simplifying assumption that only some or most decisions would have to be made on board, because a remote operator or backend service could be available a lot of the time? It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to have a single operator remotely monitoring multiple vehicles that are autonomous under ideal conditions (driving along a straight road in good weather) and then taking over when necessary. Let's say you would only use such a system for major routes with solid satellite visibility, not last-mile routes hauling heavy equipment on a dirt road in the boonies, or something like that. Maybe this wouldn't work, but it's not obviously ridiculous to me, so I wonder why he just starts out saying the truck most be fully autonomous with no human ever in the loop.
> Therefore, all safety-critical decisions must be made by the onboard computer alone.
Why is the requirement that all safety-critical decisions must be made on board, versus the seemingly-simplifying assumption that only some or most decisions would have to be made on board, because a remote operator or backend service could be available a lot of the time? It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to have a single operator remotely monitoring multiple vehicles that are autonomous under ideal conditions (driving along a straight road in good weather) and then taking over when necessary. Let's say you would only use such a system for major routes with solid satellite visibility, not last-mile routes hauling heavy equipment on a dirt road in the boonies, or something like that. Maybe this wouldn't work, but it's not obviously ridiculous to me, so I wonder why he just starts out saying the truck most be fully autonomous with no human ever in the loop.