A car pulls up to the curb. The app says, “Your ride is here.” No one’s in the driver’s seat. For people who live in one of the dozens of cities now hosting robotaxi services, this is already a reality.

The robotaxi industry has moved from prototype milestones to commercial operations, with an expanding ecosystem accelerating the pace of deployment. New collaborations announced at NVIDIA GTC Taipei reflect robotaxi programs spinning up around the world:

Regulators, certification bodies and developers are scrutinizing what safe deployment at scale requires.

Industry discussion on level 4 autonomy often centers on what the vehicle can perceive and decide.

That discussion is well-founded. Accurate perception, sound decision-making and handling the unexpected are difficult problems, and real progress toward solving them is being made.

But perception and decisions alone are not the whole story. Regulators require something more: proof that the overall system behaves reliably, isolates faults before they escalate and never operates outside the boundaries it was designed for.