A Bloomberg report on Thursday stated that the ride-hailing behemoth Uber will roll out passenger-ready self-driving vehicles in the city of Pittsburgh later this month. Customers summoning regular Ubers from their phones will be randomly assigned to one of a fleet of tricked-out Volvo SUVs, able to drive without human assistance.
This isn't exactly the official beginning of the robot-car Judgment Day, however. In compliance with Pennsylvania state law, there will still be backup human drivers at the wheel. And according to ABC News, a "co-pilot" will likewise be sitting in the passenger's seat, taking notes on a laptop. These rides will be free to passengers who choose to use them.
But the announcement as well as the report by Bloomberg, marks a noteworthy milestone that no other company has crossed: Uber can brag of having the first self-driving-car-based service brought to market, beating arch-rivals at Google, Apple, Tesla, and other vehicle producers.
CEO Travis Kalanick has longed to automate the company's fleet, and has competed hard for the best engineers, start-up acquisitions, mapping systems and lidar software to do it. His company opened its Advanced Technologies Center to research autonomous cars along the banks of the Allegheny River in February 2015, acquiring 40 employees away from Carnegie Mellon University's esteemed robotics research lab. Just a year and a half later, Uber has beaten its rivals to the punch.
It might well be years, even decades, before cars are really driverless; numerous security, technical, and regulatory issues remain to be addressed. Still, testing these vehicles with passengers who truly need to go somewhere "provides an opportunity for answering some of these questions in real-world environments," says Susan Shaheen, a UC Berkeley transportation scholar. And most of all, Uber's plans highlight Pittsburgh efforts to establish itself as the capital of a fast developing international field. "We have three rivers, 500 bridges, a mountain range, and a crazy street grid," says McNulty. "If autonomous vehicles can work here, they can work anywhere."
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