Oxbotica CTO Newman tells MPs: explainability is foundation of trust in self-driving
Last week, Oxbotica founder and CTO, Professor Paul Newman, addressed MPs on the Transport Committee to explain how self-driving technologies will deliver value to people, businesses and the planet.
The company posted about it on Linkedin, including a short video.
In relation to commercialisation, he said: “I think there’s an ordering of these technologies, and there’s an ordering of the operational design domain. Burdens are rightly different in some domains – it’s different in a mine to Kensington High Street.
“I’ve never come across a city that asks for more single occupancy vehicles, ever. They’ve always said: fewer please. So, I don’t think personal, private transports are the future, because cities want to change the way transport works. They want to make it more accessible. The number of bus trips that Londoners take is absolutely extraordinary. Let’s support that.
“Technological complexity worries me far less than the regulatory complexity. That’s not just saying you should trust us. What’s great about some of the regulation that’s coming through is that there’s meaty technical requirements placed on the manufacturers of autonomy software. That allow the systems to be explainable, and explainability is the foundation of being trustworthy.”
For more on Oxbotica’s vision for universal autonomy, see this recent interview with its VP of Technology, Ben Upcroft.
