Robotaxis from General Motors subsidiary Cruise haven’t been seen on U.S. streets since late last year following a string of issues, including an incident with a pedestrian in San Francisco. The company decided to pull all its autonomous taxis from operation after a person in San Francisco was reportedly stuck under one and dragged by one of the vehicles. The company ended up losing its permits to operate in the area.
However, Cruise announced this week that its robotaxis will be returning to the streets of one U.S. city — Phoenix. And the company is really going back to basics with this reintroduction. All the cars will be in manual mode, meaning they will have a human being behind the wheel. The human operators will drive the cars around the city so the company can collect data to better train its self-driving technology.
“The first step is identifying high-fidelity location data for road features and map information like speed limits, stop signs, traffic lights, lane paint, right-turn-only lanes and more. Having current and accurate information will help an autonomous vehicle understand where it is and the location of certain road features,” the company said in a blog post announcing the move. It also stated that the vehicles will not carry public passengers at this time.
