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Page added on August 18, 2016
Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month
Near the end of 2014, Uber co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick flew to Pittsburgh on a mission: to hire dozens of the world’s experts in autonomous vehicles. The city is home to Carnegie Mellon University’s robotics department, which has produced many of the biggest names in the newly hot field. Sebastian Thrun, the creator of Google’s self-driving car project, spent seven years researching autonomous robots at CMU, and the project’s former director, Chris Urmson, was a CMU grad student.
“Travis had an idea that he wanted to do self-driving,” says John Bares, who had run CMU’s National Robotics Engineering Center for 13 years before founding Carnegie Robotics, a Pittsburgh-based company that makes components for self-driving industrial robots used in mining, farming, and the military. “I turned him down three times. But the case was pretty compelling.” Bares joined Uber in January 2015 and by early 2016 had recruited hundreds of engineers, robotics experts, and even a few car mechanics to join the venture. The goal: to replace Uber’s more than 1 million human drivers with robot drivers—as quickly as possible.
The plan seemed audacious, even reckless. And according to most analysts, true self-driving cars are years or decades away. Kalanick begs to differ. “We are going commercial,” he says in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “This can’t just be about science.”
Starting later this month, Uber will allow customers in downtown Pittsburgh to summon self-driving cars from their phones, crossing an important milestone that no automotive or technology company has yet achieved. Google, widely regarded as the leader in the field, has been testing its fleet for several years, and Tesla Motors offers Autopilot, essentially a souped-up cruise control that drives the car on the highway. Earlier this week, Ford announced plans for an autonomous ride-sharing service. But none of these companies has yet brought a self-driving car-sharing service to market.
Uber’s Pittsburgh fleet, which will be supervised by humans in the driver’s seat for the time being, consists of specially modified Volvo XC90 sport-utility vehicles outfitted with dozens of sensors that use cameras, lasers, radar, and GPS receivers. Volvo Cars has so far delivered a handful of vehicles out of a total of 100 due by the end of the year. The two companies signed a pact earlier this year to spend $300 million to develop a fully autonomous car that will be ready for the road by 2021.
The Volvo deal isn’t exclusive; Uber plans to partner with other automakers as it races to recruit more engineers. In July the company reached an agreement to buy Otto, a 91-employee driverless truck startup that was founded earlier this year and includes engineers from a number of high-profile tech companies attempting to bring driverless cars to market, including Google, Apple, and Tesla. Uber declined to disclose the terms of the arrangement, but a person familiar with the deal says that if targets are met, it would be worth 1 percent of Uber’s most recent valuation. That would imply a price of about $680 million. Otto’s current employees will also collectively receive 20 percent of any profits Uber earns from building an autonomous trucking business.
Otto has developed a kit that allows big-rig trucks to steer themselves on highways, in theory freeing up the driver to nap in the back of the cabin. The system is being tested on highways around San Francisco. Aspects of the technology will be incorporated into Uber’s robot livery cabs and will be used to start an Uber-like service for long-haul trucking in the U.S., building on the intracity delivery services, like Uber Eats, that the company already offers.
The Otto deal is a coup for Uber in its simmering battle with Google, which has been plotting its own ride-sharing service using self-driving cars. Otto’s founders were key members of Google’s operation who decamped in January, because, according to Otto co-founder Anthony Levandowski, “We were really excited about building something that could be launched early.”
Levandowski, one of the original engineers on the self-driving team at Google, started Otto with Lior Ron, who served as the head of product for Google Maps for five years; Claire Delaunay, a Google robotics lead; and Don Burnette, another veteran Google engineer. Google suffered another departure earlier this month when Urmson announced that he, too, was leaving.
“The minute it was clear to us that our friends in Mountain View were going to be getting in the ride-sharing space, we needed to make sure there is an alternative [self-driving car],” says Kalanick. “Because if there is not, we’re not going to have any business.” Developing an autonomous vehicle, he adds, “is basically existential for us.” (Google also invests in Uber through Alphabet’s venture capital division, GV.)
Unlike Google and Tesla, Uber has no intention of mass-producing its own cars, Kalanick says. Instead, the company will strike deals with auto manufacturers, starting with Volvo Cars, and will develop kits for other models. The Otto deal will help; the company makes its own laser detection, or lidar, system, used in many self-driving cars. Kalanick believes that Uber can use the data collected from its app, where human drivers and riders are logging roughly 100 million miles per day, to quickly improve its self-driving mapping and navigation systems. “Nobody has set up software that can reliably drive a car safely without a human,” Kalanick says. “We are focusing on that.”
In Pittsburgh, customers will request cars the normal way, via Uber’s app, and will be paired with a driverless car at random. Trips will be free for the time being, rather than the standard local rate of $1.30 per mile. In the long run, Kalanick says, prices will fall so low that the per-mile cost of travel, even for long trips in rural areas, will be cheaper in a driverless Uber than in a private car. “That could be seen as a threat,” says Volvo Cars CEO Hakan Samuelsson. “We see it as an opportunity.”
Although Kalanick and other self-driving car advocates say the vehicles will ultimately save lives, they face harsh scrutiny for now. In July a driver using Tesla’s Autopilot service died after colliding with a tractor-trailer, apparently because both the driver and the car’s computers didn’t see it. (The crash is currently being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.) Google has seen a handful of accidents, but they’ve been less severe, in part because it limits its cars to 25 miles per hour. Uber’s cars haven’t had any fender benders since they began road-testing in Pittsburgh in May, but at some point something will go wrong, according to Raffi Krikorian, the company’s engineering director. “We’re interacting with reality every day,” he says. “It’s coming.”
For now, Uber’s test cars travel with safety drivers, as common sense and the law dictate. These professionally trained engineers sit with their fingertips on the wheel, ready to take control if the car encounters an unexpected obstacle. A co-pilot, in the front passenger seat, takes notes on a laptop, and everything that happens is recorded by cameras inside and outside the car so that any glitches can be ironed out. Each car is also equipped with a tablet computer in the back seat, designed to tell riders that they’re in an autonomous car and to explain what’s happening. “The goal is to wean us off of having drivers in the car, so we don’t want the public talking to our safety drivers,” Krikorian says.
On a recent weekday test drive, the safety drivers were still an essential part of the experience, as Uber’s autonomous car briefly turned un-autonomous, while crossing the Allegheny River. A chime sounded, a signal to the driver to take the wheel. A second ding a few seconds later indicated that the car was back under computer control. “Bridges are really hard,” Krikorian says. “And there are like 500 bridges in Pittsburgh.”
Bridges are hard in part because of the way that Uber’s system works. Over the past year and a half, the company has been creating extremely detailed maps that include not just roads and lane markings, but also buildings, potholes, parked cars, fire hydrants, traffic lights, trees, and anything else on Pittsburgh’s streets. As the car moves, it collects data, and then using a large, liquid-cooled computer in the trunk, it compares what it sees with the preexisting maps to identify (and avoid) pedestrians, cyclists, stray dogs, and anything else. Bridges, unlike normal streets, offer few environmental cues—there are no buildings, for instance—making it hard for the car to figure out exactly where it is. Uber cars have Global Positioning System sensors, but those are only accurate within about 10 feet; Uber’s systems strive for accuracy down to the inch.
When the Otto acquisition closes, likely this month, Otto co-founder Levandowski will assume leadership of Uber’s driverless car operation, while continuing to oversee his company’s robotic trucking business. The plan is to open two additional Uber R&D centers, one in the Otto office, a cavernous garage in San Francisco’s Soma neighborhood, a second in Palo Alto. “I feel like we’re brothers from another mother,” Kalanick says of Levandowski.
The two men first met at the TED conference in 2012, when Levandowski was showing off an early version of Google’s self-driving car. Kalanick offered to buy 20 of the prototypes on the spot—“It seemed like the obvious next step,” he says with a laugh—before Levandowski broke the bad news to him. The cars were running on a loop in a closed course with no pedestrians; they wouldn’t be safe outside the TED parking lot. “It was like a roller coaster with no track,” Levandowski explains. “If you were to step in front of the vehicle, it would have just run you over.”
Kalanick began courting Levandowski this spring, broaching the possibility of an acquisition during a series of 10-mile night walks from the Soma neighborhood where Uber is also headquartered to the Golden Gate Bridge. The two men would leave their offices separately—to avoid being seen by employees, the press, or competitors. They’d grab takeout food, then rendezvous near the city’s Ferry Building. Levandowski says he saw a union as a way to bring the company’s trucks to market faster.
For his part, Kalanick sees it as a way to further corner the market for autonomous driving engineers. “If Uber wants to catch up to Google and be the leader in autonomy, we have to have the best minds,” he says, and then clarifies: “We have to have all the great minds.”
35 Comments on "Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month"
Cloggie on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 10:11 am
Perfect, nobody needs to own a car anymore and remain reasonable mobile at much lower cost.
Don’t forget to bring your tablet so you have something to read while “you” drive.
Won’t be long until you have to endure strangers as co-passangers and limited detours, compensated with lower tariffs.
This is good news for (young) people with little money, software engineers and bad news for car companies.
Davy on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 10:43 am
“Perfect, nobody needs to own a car anymore” – ?????
Cloggie on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 11:08 am
In the long term, if this concept becomes wide-spread.
simonr on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 12:05 pm
Yayyy all those working class people driving cars and trucks will be unemployed.
coffeeguyzz on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 4:17 pm
FWIW
A view from Ground Zero of Uberdom, aka the SF Bay area, Ubers are EVERYWHERE.
People take them to/from stores/malls/coffee shops … the most mundane trips now cost just a few bucks and almost no waiting.
Combined with the increasingly common Google and Apple self drivers on the highways (test models), this technology is apt to be common way sooner than most might think.
Just the other day, Ford made an ‘All in’ commitment to have autonomous vehicles available in five years time.
Combining the Uber/Lyft app with driverless vehicles will forevermore change transportation behaviors.
Taking all this one step further is the recent breakthrough in Adsorbed Natural Gas technology (ANG).
The so-called ‘Holy Grail’ threshold of 500 psi storage has been achieved in the latest developments.
In the not too distant future, vehicles will have 15 to 30 GGE (gallon of gasoline equivalent) tanks, custom shaped, on vehicles that can be fueled from their houses, if natgas is available in the house.
CNG is selling for under a buck/GGE all over Oklahoma.
Having trucks and personal vehicles being operated without drivers and using inexpensive fuel will be available way sooner rather than later.
steveo on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 4:33 pm
“Perfect, nobody needs to own a car anymore and remain reasonable mobile at much lower cost.”
Define reasonable.
I wonder how much Uber will charge me to drive me from New Hampshire to West Virgina? How is that software with trailers? Can it pull my camper to it’s seasonal spot?
Outcast_Searcher on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 4:34 pm
Cloggie, I think that depends, over the next decade or so, anyway.
For driving in good weather under normal conditions, in well mapped urban settings, sure.
For interstate driving in good weather under normal conditions, again, sure.
For rural settings, given the bridge/orientation problem discussed in the article, probably not so much. And the economics of building out the infrastructure for all the rural roads to safely let self-driving cars do this would be a HUGE cost, so I don’t see that happening soon.
However, as someone who would like to reliably be able to take a robo-cab to the local grocery store or doctor in 15 or 20 years as I age — this is very exciting news.
…
For full automation in all modes like bad weather, for all unexpected events (where, for example an elderly or impaired human can’t safely take over), in all places including rural areas, this could take a long while yet — like multiple decades.
Still, just like with PHEV’s and BEV’s, progress is obvious, and it’s great to see.
makati1 on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 5:20 pm
They used to be called “Taxis” but now they are trying to eliminate one more job category, drivers. With robots making the robot cars and robots driving them, who is going to have a job/income to use them? Plus, as mentioned above, they are going to be useless in 90% of America because of weather, road outages, etc.
BTW: Some of the taxis here have GPS and it makes telling the driver where to go much easier. And the trip faster … sometimes. But there is still a driver and always will be. The Ps needs jobs, not robots. So do Americans, but they are too stupid to realize it.
John on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 5:32 pm
I want to drive, I love driving, I get excited driving….I have no absolutely no idea where this boring slant on life comes from…one of the things you look forward to in early life is learning to drive….this is not for me.
Who will be the new driving instructor???..Intel..
Westexasfanclub on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 6:18 pm
I don’t know if “we” need jobs. One major reason for the precarious state of the world is the “need for a job” or the “need to work”.
We would be probably better of if we redefined “wok”, “job” and “wellbeing”. Automation could give us an opportunity to do so.
John on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 6:22 pm
Jesus Christ is there someone looking to actually have sex with robots and software ???
Cloggie on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 6:56 pm
“Jesus Christ is there someone looking to actually have sex with robots and software ???”
Apneaman.
Cloggie on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 7:04 pm
“With robots making the robot cars and robots driving them, who is going to have a job/income to use them? ”
Basic income becoming almost inevitable, enabling us to live a contemplating life. You can sit on a pole all day and stare at your navel and as such acquire Great Wisdom and Enlightenment.
It needs to be said that the idea of 9-5, 5 days a week, is a relatively new invention. For eons the lifestyle of choice was standing up all day, staring to the clouds, with the hands in your pockets, counting your testicles.
These glorious days could return.
John on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 7:15 pm
“Need to work” or “need for a job” quote….both these quotes have been used for years with the unemployed….free loading, benefits absorbing…
If there was no free money, u wouldn’t have freeloaders, unemployed religious leaders breathing hate, u wouldn’t have rights activists etc…protesting while still sucking tax payers money.
The shits would need to work like the rest of us !!!!
(If there is a revolution, it will prob come from normal people this time, who work and have s normal outlook on religion)
makati1 on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 7:24 pm
Cloggie, you really should quit smoking that stuff. Your idea that we will live in utopia is so far to the extreme of reality that I do not even know how to reply.
However, your idea that the old days are going to return is correct. It just depends on how long ago you are talking about. I would say hunter-gatherer is about right, for those who survive the coming bottleneck.
Kenz300 on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 9:13 pm
Electric cars, trucks, bicycles and mass transit are the future….
fossil fuel ICE cars are the past…………..
The Netherlands’ ban on gas-powered cars ‘likely to become law’, all new cars electric by 2025
https://electrek.co/2016/08/14/netherlands-ban-gas-powered-cars-likely-law-all-new-cars-electric-2025/
Scotland blows away the competition – 106% of electricity needs from wind – joins select club
https://electrek.co/2016/08/14/scotland-electricity-needs-from-wind/
Sissyfuss on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 9:33 pm
Clogged Arteries, now you know why you always lost count after zero.
Go Speed Racer on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 10:31 pm
More of the super rich, saying ‘death to the middle class’. No more long haul truckers, no more taxi drivers. all of those report to the soup kitchen.
Go Speed Racer on Thu, 18th Aug 2016 10:35 pm
Let’s all talk about stupid self driving cars, while the oil runs out. What a distraction from reality.
Anonymous on Fri, 19th Aug 2016 12:32 am
Looks, its driverless cars to the rescue!
If uber appeals to people who cant afford their cars anymore because they lost their jobs, or most of their job, to off-shoring and automation, then clearly the solution to the burden and expense of having to pay the crap remuneration of uber drivers, is to employ unsafe and unreliable automated cars to drive everyone around that cant afford the upkeep on a gas burner…..
GregT on Fri, 19th Aug 2016 1:36 am
“The shits would need to work like the rest of us !!!!”
A perfect example of a sheeple defending his tax farm. Human beings in general, really are not much smarter than yeast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbp6umQT58A
makati1 on Fri, 19th Aug 2016 3:30 am
KenZ:
“Hitting the solar wall”
“Australia Finds Out Wind Power Doesn’t Really Work”
“Poland Brings Wind Works to Standstill With $131 Million at Risk”
“Solar City slashing costs, including CEO pay”
“Utility scale energy storage batteries: only enough material exists on earth for Sodium sulfur”
All recent negatives for “renewables”. What is going to charge those electric cars?
Dream on…
Cloggie on Fri, 19th Aug 2016 4:44 am
makati, old fox, there is a reason why you didn’t post links with these headlines. If you take the trouble to find these articles you will see that none of them contains fundamental arguments against windpower.
The Australian article is a typical rightwing site wrongly arguing that feed-in tariffs are “subsidies” rather than money for economic value (kwh).
The Polish article is Bloomberg reporting that there is a local dispute about wind turbines too close to communities.
You are resisting tooth and nail against the idea that wind and solar could actually work and treathen your doomer world view.
Having said that, I agree that large scale EV driving powered by renewables is indeed a pipe dream. It will take decades to setup an solar-wind energy base that at least powers lights, fridges, computers, etc. before you can even begin to think of powering vehicles.
Fortunately people from Australia, Arizona and South-Africa don’t have to wait that long:
https://youtu.be/x6Nl2tBWuLk
3000 km in 5 days, solar only.
80 kmh max. with 4 adults.
Davy on Fri, 19th Aug 2016 5:36 am
This self-driving car thing is really a distraction. It is these distractions that keep us upbeat and hopeful. We have not had major innovative technological change since the internet came on the scene. We may be taking what we have and making it more efficient and effective but that also has a window that is facing dimensioning returns and limits. Self-driving cars are just what we don’t need. What is so disturbing to me about this car thing is cars period. We should be engaged as a modern civilization doing everything we can to adapt away from cars towards localization. We should be doing this because of climate change and peak oil. We should also be doing this for the economy because at some point there will be fuel shortages. Once we have widespread systematic fuel shortages we will have an economy in crisis. A global economy in crisis more than a few months will be a collapsing global economy. I am arguing now we are in a collapse process but this will be different. Fuel shortages will slow economic velocity too much for adaptation. We are stuck in a car culture and it will be our end.
Cloggie on Fri, 19th Aug 2016 6:26 am
The self-driving car could soften the effects of the collapse of society (if any). The self-driving car should be seen as a micro-bus-on-demand, offering more accurate door-to-door transport. The main advantage is that it is no longer necessary to own a car and still be able to visit a doctor, your grand-children, college or a party. It is a cheap taxi since you don’t have to pay the driver. When I took a cab to my local airport (15 km) the price tag was 40 euro.
With a standard all-in Dutch price per km of 45 cent…
https://www.nibud.nl/consumenten/wat-kost-een-auto/
… the real cost of the trip without driver would have been 7 euro.
Or even much lower if you realise that these 45 cent are calculated against the standard 2% operational time/98% idle, where a “collectivized car from the pool” will be operational a far higher fraction of the time, reducing fixed cost part of the price tag.
Extra advantages of this micro-bus:
1) you can talk to the busdriver because there isn’t any
2) nobody cares if you are sober or not
3) small remote communities become more viable
steveo on Fri, 19th Aug 2016 7:09 am
“This self-driving car thing is really a distraction. It is these distractions that keep us upbeat and hopeful.”
Spot on Davy!
The fact is that we have reached the point of diminishing returns in our economy/civilization. Robot trucks and taxis aren’t going to fix that.
PracticalMaina on Fri, 19th Aug 2016 9:51 am
Think of all of the extra brewing industry jobs, I would like to kick back with a local micro brew and be driven home from work while I watch a movie. It means driving slower on the highway is less painful and therefore you can be more environmentally friendly.
Think of the hop farming jobs!
PracticalMaina on Fri, 19th Aug 2016 9:53 am
think of all of the potential body working jobs if there is a hack or glitch! Talk about a stimulus!
Kenz300 on Fri, 19th Aug 2016 11:01 am
Climate Change is real and it will impact all of us and future generations……We all need to do our part to transition to a safer, cleaner and cheaper energy future…
Watch The Climate Change Ad Fox News Didn’t Want Its Viewers To See
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/climate-change-ad-fox-news_us_57892a37e4b03fc3ee50c207?section=
Climate Change is real….. we will all be impacted by it……
Exxon’s Climate Change Cover-Up Is ‘Unparalleled Evil,’ Says Activist
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/exxon-evil-bill-mckibben_561e7362e4b028dd7ea5f45f?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green§ion=green
The Effects Of Growth: Sprawl & Development – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA33sraoyCk
Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?
http://www.npr.org/2016/08/18/479349760/should-we-be-having-kids-in-the-age-of-climate-change
Apneaman on Fri, 19th Aug 2016 11:57 am
08/19/2016
What Are Our “Best Minds” Doing?
“Naturally I was thrilled to learn that Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Is Arriving In Pittsburgh This Month (story in Bloomberg, August 18, 2016). I live in Pittsburgh.”
“Earlier in the week Matt Taibbi asked whether there a word for “lower than scum?” (here).
We face a similar problem today — is there a term stronger than “batshit crazy?”
The greater Flatland problem is that replacing a million Uber drivers with souped-up driverless Volvos is seen as a positive development. Our “best minds” are working on it.”
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2016/08/what-are-our-best-minds-doing.html
Apneaman on Fri, 19th Aug 2016 12:17 pm
Collapsing Pyramids
“The energy that human technological civilization is most rapidly converting to entropy in their races to profit and expansion will soon be gone, converted to lots of conduits (factory cells, infrastructure), waste gases and heat. In its expected course defined by the maximum power principle it will eat everything as quickly as possible and then the extant conduits will stop growing, die and deteriorate.”
http://megacancer.com/2016/08/19/collapsing-pyramids/
Anonymous on Fri, 19th Aug 2016 12:47 pm
Driverless cars don’t even work, despite the claims of their proponents. And barring breakthroughs in strong AI, they will never work. And if we ever did invent a true, strong AI system, I am confident humans are stupid enough to prioritize one of its first tasks as…
“Strong AI, or (HAL?), could you please drive me to Walmart?. I would do it myself, if only I wasn’t sooo busy texting and tweeting. Thank you.”
We can use (current) computers to fly planes in level flight, or use them to run automated TRANSIT trains or trams along FIXED rail routes. That is not too difficult. The idea you can program a bus or car, using current computer architecture to drop people off at their doorsteps like a human driver could, is a fantasy, sorry cloggie. Use a bike for the last mile.
Driverless cars are something do NOT need. Its an attempt to manufacture needs\wants out of thin air(ya know, welfare-capitalism*). The effort spent promoting robo-cars is wasted time ,resources, and money.
*I hope you didnt think a robocar network would be self-financing did you? Car capitalists, not matter the ‘tech’, always go hat-in-hand to gov’t(taxpayer) to subsidize their business models. Robot-cars wont be an exception.
tahoe1780 on Fri, 19th Aug 2016 5:53 pm
Will they pay into social security?
makati1 on Fri, 19th Aug 2016 10:42 pm
tahoe, Social Security is a myth. The one you are probably talking about (US) is already dependent on taxes to pay out the current 50+ million of us retirees. There is no “lock box” full of cash from earlier over collection. Nothing but Treasury IOUs. When the SHTF, I suspect the SS checks/auto-deposits will vanish. Until then, TPTB are still afraid of the revolt that would surly happen if the payments stopped before then.
Your security is only what YOU yourself can provide. I’m sure you already know this, but it bears reminding.
joe on Sat, 20th Aug 2016 12:51 am
A million syrians just entered germany, what the hell will they work at? Its amazing tech, but my gut tells me that society will heavily regulate this because the prospect of millions of taxpayers/voters being put on welfare because of some software might be unpalatable to legislators. Its also possible that the widespread oppertunity for sabotage and terrorism will be also a limiting factor. How long until isis fills 10 uber cars with fertaliser bombs and orders them online to times square?
Its a system wide open to abuse. You dont even have to hack it. The idealism is great but it will put so many in the west out of work that it will negatively feedback on itself economically so that the cost of maintaining a robotic fleet will make humans cost competitive until equilibrium is reached. Its likely that the government is waiting for this to play itself out and let the market decide the pros and cons, but in the process we will see many odd things happening with this tech.