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

"Sharing"

[Calydor]

Yeah, they are totally not a taxi company but just two people sharing a ride because they're going the same way.

Even when the cars have no drivers.

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.

Re:"Sharing"

[fluffernutter]

If you like meeting totally random people that much, why not just walk up to someone on the street and introduce yourself?

Re:"Sharing"

[fluffernutter]

You start going down that road, and quickly you can point out that most laws are interference to the free market. Does this mean there should be no laws against any corporation ever? Just because you don't see the particular point of a given law, it doesn't make them less important to enforce.

Re:"Sharing"

[Calydor]

But the cut that is no longer going to the drivers can easily be turned into a bonus for the CEO

Fixed that for you, it was a common typo to make.

Re:"Sharing"

[aaarrrgggh]

While I hope you are being sarcastic, I am sure you understand that the risks caused by "unprofessional" drivers acting in a professional (for-hire) capacity extend beyond yourself. I have had close calls with Uber drivers on at least 4 occasions during the summer where they nearly ran into me on my bicycle, because they could not handle the multi-tasking and situational awareness that is needed to drive a car for hire.

Uber generally does more than just displace taxis; it also displaces people driving themselves places and parking. While I think the latter is generally good, it is increasing the number of for-hire cars on the road without adequate protections. I would hold the self-driving cars from anyone to the same standard as a for-hire car.

Free rides in Pittsburgh

[93 Escort Wagon]

At least for now. I suppose one negative is - you have to share a vehicle with an engineer. /ducks

Re:Free rides in Pittsburgh

[RobotRunAmok]

Yeah, but you are already driving to someplace in Pittsburgh, so how much worse can your day really get?

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'.

Map based solutions?

[OzPeter]

TFA implies that Uber will be using a map based systems plus GPS to identify where the car is and I guess under what parameters it should be driving. This is OK for a reasonably static environment. But that raises questions some questions for me:

1. How do these type of systems know when the traffic lights change? (or even identify which lights they should respond to?)
2. How are they meant to cope when cop/worker directs that you have to take a detour around a transient event (EG car crash)?
3. How does the systems know when a temporary speed limit has been erected?
4. In VA at least, if there is a cop car on the side of a two lane the road you are required to move over when passing them. So how does the system spot that?

I know that this is really early times for driverless cars, but to me the map based systems can't deal with the above scenarios, and they are transient enough that by the time such a situation has been reported to a central mapping location the event could easily have already disappeared.

Re:Map based solutions?

[DrXym]

Those scenarios are just the tip of the iceberg. Well they might have a human supervising the car because it's extremely unlikely that by itself could deal with many intractible scenarios that a human driver would barely have to think about.

Re:Map based solutions?

[DarkOx]

4. In VA at least, if there is a cop car on the side of a two lane the road you are required to move over when passing them. So how does the system spot that?

Its a little worse than that even, see that rule is actually suffixed with "if it is safe to do so" or similar language. IE if you have cut 2' in front of someone's bumper in traffic at speed to do so, you should not actually do it. There is a lot of subjective decision making in driving. What I just described might not be safe at 70mph on the interstate or it might be if that person has acknowledged you and is waving you in. The mixture of automated drivers and humans is going to prove interesting.

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.

Re:Progress

[clonehappy]

Yeah, it really is a joke. Even the Google car only operates in autonomous mode a bit over half the time, the rest of the time being piloted by a real person. That's about the same percentage of time you can text, eat, change the radio, etc. as a person and not pay attention to the road. So what we're really being told is that we've finally gotten a computer to be able to do what a human can do with spare background cycles.

Whoo-hoo!

Although if we're being truthfully honest about all AI and all autonomous cars and all this hype, the real story is:

Objective: Eliminate humans. Eliminate the human experience, eliminate the human element and turn the world into one big machine.

But that's the elephant in the room that no one will admit, that the entire agenda is one that's anti-humanity, period. Too bad the computers will NEVER be able to reliably make the kinds of judgment calls that humans can and the entire AI borg system is going to come crashing down sooner or later, so we really won't have to worry about the anti-humanist ilk ever really doing much of anything to worry about.

Should be a dog and an "engineer"

[Tokolosh]

The dog is there to bite the "engineer" should he attempt to touch the controls.

The "engineer" is there to feed the dog.