San Francisco, California – Cruise, the driverless technology company, has announced the rollout of its latest software release to its fleet of autonomous vehicles. The new features and improvements are aimed at enhancing the driving experience for passengers and improving the overall performance of the vehicles.
In the new software release, Cruise has improved the driving behavior of its vehicles through the shipment of TSEL v8 (planning model). This has resulted in smoother driving overall, with an improvement of 20% in the smoothness of the driving experience. The vehicles now have more decisive left turns and display more human-like behavior at yellow traffic lights, with a 75% improvement. The vehicles also exhibit smoother nudging in narrow overtakes and smoother driving around rear bicyclists.
Cruise has also shipped STA Bikes v10 and VRU MTL v2, which improve driving around cyclists and pedestrians in a variety of situations. The vehicles are now able to better anticipate the behavior of cyclists and pedestrians, resulting in improved driving in these situations.
The software release also includes the shipment of pSeg v5.1.3 (a core perception model), which improves the detection of fast-moving cyclists by 15% and the motion detection of nearby pedestrians by 20%. The shipment of PD-v25 (object detection model) has also improved the detection of near-field objects in heavy fog conditions by 46%, allowing for smoother driving in fog and the ability to ride in even heavier fog conditions in the future.
Cruise has also improved the pick-up and drop-off experience by more reliably finding a spot to pull over on the first try, reducing the need to circle the block by 90%. The end-of-ride experience has also been streamlined, with the ability to call for support only in emergency situations.
The company has launched Scene Encoder v0, which, together with TSEL, results in generally smoother driving and better driving around rear cyclists. Trip interruptions have been reduced through more robust handling of map edges and increased avoidance of problem areas. The ability to recover from trip interruptions has also been expanded through expanded support capabilities and better recovery from fallback maneuvers.
The vehicles now experience smoother driving in narrow spaces, getting stuck 8% less often, and display 4-5% smoother left turns with oncomers and around lane-splitting bicycles. Braking comfort has been improved by 67% in certain scenarios involving curved roads, oncomers merging back into their lane, and cross-traffic turning into an adjacent lane. The shipment of LPC v3 has also improved braking comfort and the consistency of driving on steep and wet roads.
Cruise has also improved yielding trajectories near stop signs and traffic lights, resulting in reduced nudging from the autonomous vehicles. The motion planning improvements have expanded the ability to perform evasive maneuvers at higher speeds, improving safety. The company has also shipped real-time detection of new speed bumps, increasing the ability to drive comfortably over speed bumps.
The statistics measuring the percentage of improvement are based on internal benchmarks and metrics conducted by Cruise.
