Uber's First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month (bloomberg.com)

Ride-hailing app Uber will introduce self-driving cars in Pittsburgh as soon as this month, Bloomberg reports citing many officials and engineers at the company. The move is the first part of a pilot program to explore the future of the technology, the report added. The company plans to test 100 Volvo XC90s outfitted to drive themselves. Still, the cars will be accompanied by two humans: an engineer who can take control of the vehicle when needed and a co-pilot who takes note. Bloomberg reports: 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 1percent of Uber's most recent valuation.

Comments

Pittsburgh? Good choice.

[krotscheck]

Pittsburgh's roads are... actually, a surprisingly complex test bed for this kind of thing. Between bridges, bridges over streets, bridges over bridges over streets, bridges over bridges over tunnels, the "Pittsburgh Left", potholes, the lower deck of the Penn Bridge, and intersections like this one, Uber will have plenty of good edge cases to test their AI on. ...though, you might not want to drive while the AI is being tested. Just sayin'.

Re:"Sharing"

[Mashiki]

Yeah they can try that bullshit all they want, but governments seem to finally be stopping it which is good. They're a taxi company, and that means they can pay on the same qualification that a regular taxi driver/company does. Mandatory CPR, mandatory inspections, mandatory safeties, and mandatory insurance.

Progress

[DarkOx]

Objective: Eliminate the need for drivers from our livery service to obtain cost savings and reduce personnel overhead utilizing automation technology.

Proposed solution: The self driving solution will operate the vehicle however requires and engineer to be present and able to take over driving and operation of key systems as required. Additional a co-pilot shall be present to record events and assist the engineer as required.

  Progress!

*I get the presence of the engineer and co-pilot are temporary its still kinda funny though, they have replaced a low skill driver with an engineer, and probably someone with similar training/qualification as the former driver to be co-pilot.