Cruise Sings About AV Development Challenges In San Francisco: Video

GM’s autonomous driving technology division, Cruise, recently released a brief video featuring footage captured by Cruise’s fleet of driverless Chevy Bolt EVs, demonstrating some of the challenges the autonomous vehicles face on the streets of San Francisco. The video includes lighthearted music and lyrics to accompany the footage.

“I’m an autonomous driving automobile,” the lyrics sing. “Nobody else behind the wheel.”

Clocking in at a little over a minute, the video shows a variety of scenes captured by the Cruise driverless Chevy Bolt EV external cameras, which are used to collect data and help the onboard algorithms safely pilot the vehicle on public roads. Judging by the footage, it looks as though the Cruise vehicles face a variety of situations that could potentially thwart onboard programming, such as motorcyclists doing wheelies, downed tree branches in the street, trash blowing in the breeze, a pedestrian chasing after a loose basketball, skateboarders blowing through intersections, and much more.

Cruise began offering customers free rides in its fleet of Chevy Bolt EVs late last year, and received a permit this past spring to begin charging for rides. According to Cruise, the fleet of EVs has covered over a quarter million autonomous miles as of August 1^st, 2022, all of which have gone towards refining the company’s autonomous driving technology.

It was recently revealed that GM petitioned the National Highway Traffic Administration (NHTSA) to deploy fully autonomous vehicles on public roads without a steering wheel, pedals, windshield wipers, or mirrors. Although GM will not sell fully autonomous vehicles to the public, the move to deploy AVs without human pilot controls sets the stage for the launch of the Cruise Origin.

Cruise Origin

First revealed in January of 2020, Cruise Origin is a self-driving robotaxi featuring an all-electric powertrain and a large cabin space for passengers. When it initially debuted, Cruise stated that Origin would have core AV software that could best an average human driver in terms of performance and safety.

Check out the recent Cruise video right here:

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