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Uber Starts Self Driving Car Pickups In Pittsburgh (techcrunch.com)
The reports were true. Uber on Wednesday announced it a select group of Pittsburgh users will get a surprise the next time they book a cab: the option to ride in a self-driving car. TechCrunch reports: The announcement comes a year-and-a-half after Uber hired dozens of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University's robotics center to develop the technology. Uber gave a few members of the press a sneak peek Tuesday when a fleet of 14 Ford Fusions equipped with radar, cameras and other sensing equipment pulled up to Uber's Advanced Technologies Campus (ATC) northeast of downtown Pittsburgh. During my 45-minute ride across the city, it became clear that this is not a bid at launching the first fully formed autonomous cars. Instead, this is a research exercise. Uber wants to learn and refine how self driving cars act in the real world. That includes how the cars react to passengers -- and how passengers react to them. "How do drivers in cars next to us react to us? How do passengers who get into the backseat who are experiencing our hardware and software fully experience it for the first time, and what does that really mean?" said Raffi Krikorian, director of Uber ATC.When a couple of drivers were asked about Uber's push to get cabs drive themselves, they weren't pleased.
If I were a passenger in a self driving car, I would sit in the back seat and act panicked, banging on the windows with a horrified look on my face while mouthing "help me!", every time we passed another car.
Uber-bot 54321 has filed a lawsuit against Uber-bot 12345 in federal court today. Uber-bot 54321 claims that Uber-bot 12345 failed to yield at the intersection of Beta Drive and Program Lane. It is still unclear if humans will be on the jury as they are becoming less and less reliable in every-day matters of state.
In other news, Uber-bot OS 10 has been released today leading to scattered reports of biological transport vehicles randomly stopping in the middle of transit lanes. AI developers promise a patch is forthcoming.
Chemical batteries are still overheating world wide, leading some in the Matrix Party to call re-ignite calls for the biological battery initiative to be readdressed in Congress. President Siri has not commented on this.
Turning to weather, the Arctic Tundra is expecting another comfortable day, with High's in the mid 80's...