We spoke to the guy who got stuck in a Waymo robot taxi on a dizzying turn

A month ago, a video went viral on social networks The Waymo robotaxi is stuck in a loop – An isolated incident with no passengers in the vehicle, according to Waymo.

Apparently, this was not a one-time job.

Around the same time, in another Waymo robotax heading to the Phoenix airport, Mike Jones, founder and CEO of AI consultancy Digital Mind State, also circled the parking lot, unable to stop or exit the vehicle.

The videos were released a few days after each other. Waymo has not confirmed whether the incidents are simultaneous or whether there have been other similar unusual incidents, but said it has issued software updates to address the issue.

Johns spent “less than seven minutes” on the Waymo, but he says it “felt like forever,” especially since he was afraid he was going to miss his flight and asked if the car had been broken into. It was his second time in a Waymo robot taxi.

A Waymo spokesperson confirmed the incident. “This incident occurred in early December and has since been resolved with a regularly scheduled software update. The vehicle completed the driver’s journey and they were not charged for the trip.”

He told TechCrunch that a Waymo customer support specialist was called to the car without a suggestion from Johns. The agent said he received a notification that his vehicle “may be experiencing route issues.” video Johns shared the event.

To fix the problem, the technician asked Jones to open the Waymo app and “tap the ‘My Ride’ button in the lower left corner (of the app),” to which Jones replied, “You can’t do that? You should be able to, take the car, you don’t need my phone.”

A fair question, considering why such a capture is a remote assistant.

“I don’t have a choice to drive,” he said.

Waymo tells TechCrunch that its ride-hailing agents are different fleet response teamit’s autonomous driving software (known as “Waymo Driver”) taps for help when it encounters an unfamiliar situation on the road.

As Johns talked about, driver support agents can respond to rider assistance — riders can communicate through the Waymo app and the car’s call button. They can also “make contact if Waymo’s vehicle diagnostics indicate such a need.” But they don’t communicate directly with the car’s driver software.

Eventually, Jones says, following instructions from a support agent in the app, the robotaxi got back on course.

Johns said Waymo reimbursed him for the ride and directed him to its website to file a complaint. The company did not immediately contact him after the incident, but did this week after his video was taken major news outlets.

“My biggest takeaway is that in this digital age we’re in, we’re so far removed from the human factor,” Jones told TechCrunch. “I’m all for AI. I am at the forefront of artificial intelligence, automation, robotics, but there is still a human factor.”

Missy Cummings, professor of autonomy and robotics at George Mason University and former chief safety adviser for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, says the incident, while small, illustrates a larger problem that AV companies must address.

“With any robotic system, there’s a big red button somewhere that if you push it, the thing turns off,” Cummings told TechCrunch, noting that the button could be hidden in a hard-to-reach place in the car. “And let me tell you, it’s a really important safety measure because what happens if the car is… broken into by somebody and there’s a passenger in the car? You definitely need the ability to remotely stop everything in the car so they can get out.”

Waymo told TechCrunch that, in fact, “Waymo vehicles have a scrolling button that is always available to drivers” located in the app and on the passenger display, but that Johns’ support agent didn’t tell him about it, and he didn’t see it.

Cummings also noted that asking a rider to be an active participant in a fix using their app is “prone to errors” due to potential connectivity issues and user-unfriendly apps.

“I’m just surprised that he was trying to force her to get on her phone to deal with this when it was an emergency that needed to be dealt with immediately,” Cummings said. “He should have said, ‘Look, pull up the left corner of the floor and you’ll see a red button. Press that button.’”