Uber Starts Offering Self-Driving Cars In San Francisco Today!
As of today, Uber has started offering self-driving cars in San Francisco that pick up passengers for a ride.
The service first launched as a test in Pittsburgh in fall, and has now expanded to Uber's Hometown in the Bay Area!
In San Francisco, the cars face new challenges like narrow roads, very steep hills, frequent fogginess and cable cars on the street.
For safety and legal reasons, the cars don't operate completely driverless yet - 2 Uber employees, one safety driver and one test engineer will sit at the front and take control over the car if needed.
For now, there are only a few operating cars and their range of operation is limited to downtown SF, but the company is looking to expand soon and has purchased 100 vehicles in total from Volvo, which they will now equip accordingly.
The Cars
The cars used for this pilot project are Volvo XC90 SUV's - the third generation of Uber's autonomous cars, which are more advanced than the Fords used in Pittsburgh.
Uber has cooperated with Volvo directly, and integrated their own sensors and technology equipment to create an even better and smarter self-driving car.
There are 7 optical cameras, 360° radar coverage, a LiDAR unit that scans the environment, and ultrasonic detectors.
They allow the car to detect not only objects in front of it, but also potential hazards on the road underneath or around the vehicle.
Apart from the sensors, there is also a compute stack in the back of the car, which is needed for pathfinding in the complex city map and also for identifying objects.
Once the passenger gets in, an iPad located between the two front seats automatically opens up the Uber App and lets the passenger type in his destination and guides him through the steps to start his trip.
When the ride has started, the iPad displays information about the trip, the car's environment and the location on the map.
It even has an integrated function to let you take a selfie inside the self-driving Uber and share it right away - of course a smart move from Uber to ensure promotion.
Test Drive
Starting today, everyone in San Francisco that requests a ride with an UberX has the chance to get into one of these self-driving cars.
But before the service was accessible to the public, TheVerge and TechCrunch were actually invited to a test drive - and this is their verdict:
The technology seemed pretty advanced, but the human drivers still had to step in quite a lot since there are always unpredictable situations in traffic and the car sometimes operated a little too cautious.
" It felt overall like a system that is making good progress in terms of learning – but one that also still has a long way to go before it can do without its human minders up front."-TechCrunch about the Test Drive
Uber themselves have admitted that the technology for a completely autonomous car isn't quite there yet, and that a totally empty car won't pick up passengers in the near future.
Images: 1, 2, 3, Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
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© Sirwinchester
Uber originally tested them in the city i live in (Pittsburgh), and i have seen about 3 or 4 on the road so far. Very noticeable with the equipment on the roof
That's pretty cool, do you feel like most people in Pittsburgh were amazed or rather annoyed by it?
They really weren't too common to see, but i definitely think most of the younger people were impressed by it, I did hear some concerns from gen x age people but that was to be expected. I believe there is significant testing and research being put into development of self-driving tractor trailers and other hauling equitment which I think could have a termendous impact as well.
It's definitely a good step forward but Uber needs two engineers in the front seat at all times monitoring the car's actions. Cool to see it coming along, though.
They're definitely still far from an ACTUAL autonomous, empty car - but this is already a promising step forward.
Sure thing. I'm so anxious to see what happens with autonomobiles in the future. Here's something to think about, though. I was watching an older episode of Top Gear and they were talking about this very issue. to liken it to planes: A plane can take off, fly, and land completely by itself. All of those functions have an automated setting. AND, half of all plane crashes are caused by human error (didn't research that, just going off of what I heard). By that logic, it stands to reason that if we removed the pilot, we'd half the amount of plane crashes. HOWEVER... I challenge you to find someone that's completely comfortable getting onto a plane that has no pilot or copilot... I certainly wouldn't. And there lies the issue: Distrust of complete autonomy.
poor drivers,how could they live.
Sooner or later, we will see many jobs being replaced by technology / AI ..
That snapshot from the ipad inside the car looks so cool. Sometimes I think how crazy it is to see how far technology has come, we are really living in the future already
Yes that's really true, technology like this would have been unimaginable a few decades ago!
Super!!! :)
Pretty frightening to me if we ever go driver less but you never know as technology is advancing so much
Well, once the technology gets to the point where the autonomous cars can make smarter and safer decisions than humans, it'll be alright!
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Uber getting rid of uber drivers.
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