Uber doesn’t want to see self-driving cars as urban competition – on the contrary, the on-demand taxi app service is eager to adopt autonomous driving technologies itself (and perhaps get rid of all those pesky problems that come with using real human beings). Now the company is taking a real step toward the driverless world with a real project in Pittsburgh.
The project involves Ford Fusion vehicles that have been amped up with some serious aftermarket sensor tech. No one is quite sure what that tech does, but it looks ready to scan its surroundings and perhaps find ways for the car to sense the road and obstacles. Uber has stated that it is working on mapping, safety, and autonomy, which doesn’t say much but sounds like the perfect package for bringing a driverless taxi to market.
This isn’t the first big step Uber has taken toward future tech this year – the company announced a partnership in February with Carnegie Mellon University to develop new technologies and robotics for autonomous cars – but it is definitely the most visible to consumers, which has made people curious.
Th Uber Technologies Inc. car service application (app) is demonstrated for a photograph on an Apple Inc. iPhone in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2014. For San Francisco-based Uber Technologies Inc. which recently raised $1.2 billion of investors’ financing at $17 billion valuation, New York is its biggest by revenue among the 150 cities in which it operates across 42 countries. The Hamptons are a pop-up market for high-end season weekends where the average trip is three time that of an average trip in New York City. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Of course, that doesn’t mean you can just jump into the Pittsburgh Ford Fusion and expect it to carry you via voice commands. This is still in early research stages, and none of this tech will be available in the Uber fleet anytime soon. However, it’s worth noting that Uber is probably feeling pressure to hurry, since it is far from the other company creating driverless tech…and notable competitor Google is busy test-driving its own prototypes on San Francisco lots.
The next several years could be a race to the finish line for bringing a workable product to market, and Uber seems set on developing its own proprietary tech rather than just buying the services of someone else. It’s an interesting (and expensive) move, considering that product development wasn’t exactly the main focus of the taxi service app only a short time ago. Do you think Uber has what it takes?
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