AUTOMATED: Uber Begins Testing Self-Driving Cars

We Are Change

Way back when we reported that many of our jobs would cease to exist, taken over by automation and robots? The future is here.

Uber, the company best known for providing taxi services and easy jobs, has turned to the dark side and will begin testing a pilot self driving car program in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania using modified Volvo XC90’s.

Uber and Volvo signed a pact earlier this year to spend $300 million to manufacture a fully automated vehicle that will be ready by 2021, and Uber also plans to partner with additional other automakers.

In July, Uber reached an agreement to buy Otto, a driverless truck startup company with engineering ties into various high tech companies like Google, Apple and Tesla.

Anthony Levandowski was one of the original engineers on the self-driving team at Google, while his co-partner who founded Otto, Lior Ron, served as the head of product manager for Google Maps for five years.

“The minute it was clear to us that our friends in Mountain View were going to be getting in the ride-sharing space, we needed to make sure there is an alternative self-driving car because if there is not, we’re not going to have any business it is basically existential for us.” ~Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber said.

The prototype modified Volvo’s are designed with dozens of sensors that use cameras, lasers, radar, and GPS receivers to ensure the Uber customer gets safely to their destination.

Don’t worry though – for the time being humans will still occupy the driver seat of the autonomous vehicle. You can still keep your weekday or weekend Uber job at least for now.
The method for now is randomization, as Uber plans to randomly select customers in Pittsburgh to test out it’s autonomous vehicle option, which for the time being will be free during it’s testing stages.

Other companies like Google, Apple, and Tesla have expressed a desire to market autonomous vehicles but Uber isn’t planning on manufacturing it’s own. Uber plans on developing kits to give to vehicle manufactures to create autonomous vehicles, then brand it with the Uber logo for it’s taxi service. Elon Musk hopes to be manufacturing fully autonomous cars by 2017 and hinted the future is near when he said ““What we’ve got will blow people’s minds.”

We are one step closer to allowing machines to control our lives. A car doesn’t have a brain, it lacks the ability to make quick decisions and I foresee a lot of injuries and deaths from self-driving cars when they have to make a decision what to do during a crash. I also think this will be the biggest obstacle besides the software for automation, and Musk has said they have the hardware, they just need the software. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick agrees saying.

“Nobody has set up software that can reliably drive a car safely without a human We are focusing on that.”  ~Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber said.

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from We Are Change http://wearechange.org/uber-self-driving-vehicles/