U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

https://www.army.mil/article/204882/us_army_uber_sign_research_agreement

by hapnin • 8 years ago

157 120 8 years ago

sschueller• 8 years ago

Will Uber aquire the necessary licenses from the FAA to fly these things or will they also ignore those because they want to 'disrupt' the industry? Theses things better be safe before they get used.

I for one don't want one if these things crashing on my house.

sgillen2• 8 years ago

They sort of have to right? If they don’t its going to be obvious and the government should come down on them.

I guess the world isn’t perfect but we at least have regulation for things we put in the air that we won’t for self driving cars or ride sharing etc.

john_moscow• 8 years ago

Uber and the Army's research lab expect to spend a combined total of $1 million in funding for this research; this funding will be divided equally between each party.

That's about 8 person-years in salary. Given Uber's scale that doesn't make any sense.

John_KZ• 8 years ago

Could it be a front for some other kind of deal? It sounds a bit paranoid but if it's classified they wouldn't tell us anyway.

criticalpotato6• 8 years ago

Most probably from government side this is purely a bold "In case these guys manage to do it we don't want the tech to fall to hands of <insert random country> so let's get contract on their R&D now and keep eye on it. If they succeed we'll push for exclusivity and if they fail, well it's a million, who cares. We're already some 20 trillion in debt so pish posh."

1369ic3• 8 years ago

I work one level up from the lab, but they probably wouldn't tell me either because I don't have a need to know. That said, if there are classified angles to something I at least usually know what to avoid bringing up. Nothing like that with this partnership. Our command has more than 500 formal partnerships, and this deals with one of the Army's top modernization priorities (future vertical lift).

sgillen2• 8 years ago

Probably just a way to grease the wheels and start the sharing of knowledge between parties. If Uber succeeds in becoming a serious aeronotics lab then the government will definetly want to collaborate, might make sense to get some ties established now?

walshemj2• 8 years ago

lot less than that actually that's a small 3-4 person team

jadedhacker2• 8 years ago

Interesting, military only gave ~$1M for such an ambitious project while Uber is burning billions a year and could easily afford this.

My speculation is that this partnership is first and foremost an attempt to provide Uber with a patina of respectability for this attempt and access to military technical expertise. Uber just crashed and burned on self driving, something it desperately needs to quench its towering money fires. Uber's investors know that. Therefore, Uber needs to constantly appear to be "innovating" in flashy ways to keep its investors at bay with seductive promises of even greater riches.

This, even if the entire idea of flying cars driven by normal humans is insane or worse, piloted by a company known for breaking rules (now in Aviation of all things!) and have the dubious honor of being the first to kill a woman with self-driving AI.

It helps to have connections to get these contracts yo. And of course, yet another major American company cooperating with defense. Military-industrial complex indeed. Every peaceful venture must be tied to the killing machine. All the cool kids are, like Google and its TF support for drone assassinations.

EDIT: added technical expertise to 2nd paragraph

walshemj2• 8 years ago

Well maybe its a cheap way of getting access to the research larger drones for resupply in the field

kvartz2• 8 years ago

According to Gizmodo report military is using Google's Tensor Flow units for footage processing, it would be fair to assume that it's simply a trial contract to see if they can process some of that footage. That could potentially mean government contracts for private companies going to the lowest bidder, some time in the near future.

make3• 8 years ago

tensorflow is a machine learning API. you're thinking of TPUs

ransom1538• 8 years ago

"Interesting, military only gave ~$1M for such an ambitious project"

I imagine this is just a test. They are blowing the cash with 99% certainty nothing will come out of it. BUT, if headway is made, it could quickly become hundreds of millions.

Donald• 8 years ago

This is a cooperative research and development agreement ("CRADA"), which is generally a technology sharing vehicle. Money flows from the non-federal party to the federal party on these agreements. Looks like ARL is matching the funds, so Uber is putting $500k on the CRADA and ARL will reciprocate with $500k in sole-source funding on an actual contracting vehicle. I'd be surprised if the $500k paid for anything more than a proof of concept demonstration on both sides.

killjoywashere3• 8 years ago

I have done multiple CRADAs and frankly believe they are the most underutilized tool in the tech industry, they're the intellectual equivalent of buying mining rights for $5/acre.

The government has staggeringly interesting problems that need solving and sole access to some very interesting data, which they will happily share as long as you bring your own pick-axe and shovel.

Go to federallabs.org and start shopping. It's not Amazon, you'll have to actually go to some of these places and meet the custodians of the problems and data, but it's worth it.

I've said Google is where the future falls from the sky like rain. These labs are like the Mississippi River basin, all the water goes here.

The key is prospecting. You want to look around, get a good idea of how big a particular reserve is, and go for something big. You may have to start small, but keep your eye on the prize and work up a glide slope. You can get there. The law was created so you can get there.

Key programs

* Veterans Affairs

* DoD: too many labs to name, coordinated by each service, ONR, AFRL, and ARL

* NOAA

* DoE

* DoI

* DHS

Really, get a look at the Death and Taxes Poster if you want to shop by category. But the labs are the shelves lined with product you need to shop through.

https://www.timeplots.com/products/death-and-taxes-2016

curiousDog• 8 years ago

I guess they’re starting their IPO roadshow by trying to stay in the news as much as possible.

ErikAugust• 8 years ago

With as flimsy as this is, is it an ICO* roadshow?

Arubis• 8 years ago

That, and they just made it militarily important that they continue to exist.

ramzyo• 8 years ago

Not really - a $1 million CRADA doesn't make a company's existence important or guaranteed in the eyes of the military. If the technology is deployed, different story.

ikeyany• 8 years ago

And of course, yet another major American company cooperating with defense.

Just wanted to point out that a large chunk of technological innovation in the past century has roots in the military. Almost all communications protocols had origins in defense.

discordance• 8 years ago

"US Army hoping to learn from Uber's UAV killing machines"

mtgx• 8 years ago

It's called the Uber CrowdControl™ technology. It could prove useful in enemy territory when surrounded by hostile forces.

philipwhiuk• 8 years ago

If not, they activate Surge.

txsh• 8 years ago

It’s good that the US isn’t at war in Iraq any more. Uber’s surge pricing would bankrupt them.

shanghaiaway• 8 years ago

Good reason for legislators to kick Uber out of their country.

fiiv2• 8 years ago

I think this is definitely true. There are many countries in the world that are looking for an excuse to turn public opinion against Uber, and having the US Army as a partner is definitely a good way to do that.

frockington2• 8 years ago

And then they can also scrap all of the planes, space programs, tor networks, telephones and just about every other modern technology that the US Military has in someway funded

Tepix• 8 years ago

Uber misses no opportunity not to like them.

FriedPickles• 8 years ago

If both rotors spin the same direction, what keeps the aircraft body from rotating the other direction? Is there a tail rotor?

criticalpotato6• 8 years ago

Good questions, even better question would be how did we figure out quantum theory etc but couldn't figure that twice the vertical lift from 2 rotors is more than lift single rotor? How's this something credited to Uber? Dunno.

rando444• 8 years ago

Tandem rotors have been around for almost a century.

What they're doing here is stacking rotors on top of each other, not for lift, but apparently because it's quieter and allows for 'better performance' .. whatever that means.

matt4077• 8 years ago

One would think Uber has enough problems recruiting and retaining talented people, what with "go fast and break things (people)".

Now it's not just casual misogyny and user surveillance. Your work may actually kill people when used as intended.

golergka2• 8 years ago

Your work may actually kill people when used as intended.

Are you intentionally being completely oblivious to the fact that many people believe this consequence to be a good thing for them and humanity as a whole? I don't want to get into the debate about whether this belief is true or not; I'm just curious as to why HN commenters so often pretend that people with different political beliefs don't exist at all, or are only pretending to have these beliefs out of some other, hidden, true reasons.

Even if you don't agree with some political stance, it's just strange to convince yourself that nobody sincerely believes it.

aninhumer• 8 years ago

I don't think that's a fair criticism here.

The parent didn't say "Don't you know this will kill people!?" they said "This will kill people".

frockington2• 8 years ago

And what if the workers want to help kill terrorist/enemy combatants? I'm sure there is a significant portion of the population that would find this as a positive

JepZ• 8 years ago

Two guesses:

- Uber has ambitions to build a Volocopter [1] alternative

- Uber wants to become an US Army contractor (probably to utilize their AI technology for drones or self driving supply trucks/tanks)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tODIvUmH6cs

gaius• 8 years ago

I wonder if any Uber staff will resign in protest. I wonder if customers and drivers in countries not entire aligned with US imperialism will vote with their feet too.

carboy0808• 8 years ago

US imperialism? Go away troll.

jadedhacker2• 8 years ago

Afghanistan. Iraq. Central America. Indonesia. Korea. Vietnam. We can do this for a while and that's just the overt military interventions not counting colonization by American business and capitalist ideology.

pjc50• 8 years ago

Guessing this refers to http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8640985.html : multiple co-axial rotors spinning in the same direction sounds a bit odd but evidently does something clever with wakes to increase lift / reduce noise.

zeusk• 8 years ago

Well, jet engines are internally co-axial rotors spinning in the same direction (except for some with contra rotating HP and LP).

votingprawn• 8 years ago

That comparison only really holds if you ignore the stators, which the rotors are reacting against.

stephenr• 8 years ago

So the army saw how Uber’s driverless cars handle pedestrians crossing a road and said “shut up and take my money”?

rdtsc2• 8 years ago

They probably didn't even think or care about it. I bet someone on the board reached for some connections and it just happened to be the military. A lot of that stuff happens behind the scenes even though officially the is a bid and proposal process.

Bobbleoxs• 8 years ago

Isn't it ironic whilst Google's engineers are mass protesting against military contracts, Uber already signed a whole bunch without any moral dilemma whatsover. Tells a lot about the company ethics there.

On a separate note, could someone enlighten how stacked co-rotoring (moving towards the same direction) may make the aircraft silent and not noisier?

ryanlol• 8 years ago

Has Google not signed a whole bunch of military contracts?

em3rgent0rdr• 8 years ago

"Google's engineers are mass protesting"

~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees. A drop in the bucket. Clearly the vast majority of google employees don't care, rationalize away, or excuse the fact that they work for the military industrial complex.

epanchin• 8 years ago

5.6% of staff signed a petition and 1.6% resigned.

In comparison, the largest petition in the US was 4.6 million signatures, a mere 1.8% of the working age population.

RealityVoid2• 8 years ago

I think your comment is a little bit unfair seeing as only a very very small subset of those ~74.000 employees work for the "military industrial complex" and even that on a subset of the problem that is not directly aimed at killing people.

giancarlostoro• 8 years ago

How big is that team doing that contract though? Did half of the team resign? That'd be the numbers I'd be more interested in knowing about, or are these random employees?

kerng• 8 years ago

Some employees raising concerns is something, compared to noone raising concerns I'd say. It shows difference in openess and culture between the two organizations.

glogla• 8 years ago

I mean, if they were people with strong ethics who don't want to do harm, they probably wouldn't be working for Google in the first place.

soperj2• 8 years ago

You also work for the Military Industrial Complex if you live in the U.S and contribute taxes.

akhatri_aus• 8 years ago

More like Google was ready to deal with the PR and spun the story of just a few engineers resigning..

ekianjo• 8 years ago

mass protests? did you see Google engineers blocking the company gates or something?

PeterStuer• 8 years ago

I'd think people with a 'moral dilemma' wouldn't be working for Uber in the first place.

baddox2• 8 years ago

I have no clue about the stacked corotating rotors. How do they compensate for the yaw caused by the net torque? Stacked counter rotating rotor systems do exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_rotors

imglorp2• 8 years ago

I think it's about loosing a rotor, not net torque. You need to keep the roll and pitch stable in an outage.

Like that hexapod in the above link, if you lose one prop/motor/controller, you can increase power to other unit in the stack and decrease power to all the others, maintaining your stability while you descend and look for an emergency landing spot.

matthewaveryusa• 8 years ago

I find it ironic that western countries and their citizens are all kumbaya about the ethics of being a bully nation (militarily and socially) while our empires were built at the expense of those we exploited (colonialism for europeans, post WWII resource-grabs for US.) Everyone in the US forgets that the pollution and poor labor practices in China is the foundation that our buying power and consumption is based off of.

marnett2• 8 years ago

Most US citizens are woefully ignorant of this perspective. Their ignorance precludes the irony from ever showing itself.

dokem• 8 years ago

Ah yes, how amoral it is to work with, arguably, the greatest force for good the world has ever known, the US military..

criticalpotato6• 8 years ago

Or would it be time to give up on Uber and finally admit that they're neither a technology company nor anything else "groundbreaking" that Valley thinks they are.

"Technology" for the company has been coming up with a mobile app to connect drivers and potential customers - something hardly groundbreaking. Probably the most groundbreaking technological thing coming from these guys has been the multiple evasion software etc which at the end of the day are not only just sketchy to begin with but also not really anything worth their company valuation, even on the defense contracting etc where such applications could become worth something if you have slick enough lobbying/sales people.

And while their efforts to "disrupt" the taxi economy have been "great" in all honesty they've only created room for their competition to benefit on this - Uber has simply managed to take a business (taxis) and run it to chaos while what would've been the logical step was to run a similar application by the taxi companies for ride hailing.

The US defense collaboration we can only speculate on but presumably this is either government wanting to get their hands on the Uber spying software or taking their bet that if these dimwits ever come up with anything technological they can always call for it - why spend billions upon billions on R&D when you can get a bunch of small contracts for which you can negotiate exclusive rights for upcoming R&D by the companies.

My question simply is - why do you care of anything Uber anymore? After everything this company has proven to be from the law enforcement evasion to sexual harassment scandals and borderline impossible "innovations" (like seriously, who seriously thought these guys can figure out the self-driving cars etc when the 2 of the biggest technology corporations with virtually unlimited experience, know-how, funding and partnerships haven't done so yet?).

At best this would be proper honest R&D but in my honest opinion there's no way Uber is that far with the tech and no way US Army is doing R&D for civil purposes, you take into account the miniscule contract value etc and it's rather clear that this is either publicity stunt by Uber to save their sinking ship or direct tech takeover from government. In either case there's hardly anything news worthy and even less anything worth of spending time - let is sink and someone will build a better, functioning ship to take people across the busy streets of New York in some vehicle whether it's flying or on the ground.

phonebucket• 8 years ago

'"Technology" for the company has been coming up with a mobile app to connect drivers and potential customers - something hardly groundbreaking.'

While I don't care much for the company, Uber's efforts in AI research has impressed me. Have a look: http://uber.ai/

dan-0• 8 years ago

"Technology" for the company has been coming up with a mobile app to connect drivers and potential customers - something hardly groundbreaking.
And while their efforts to "disrupt" the taxi economy have been "great" in all honesty they've only created room for their competition to benefit on this - Uber has simply managed to take a business (taxis) and run it to chaos while what would've been the logical step was to run a similar application by the taxi companies for ride hailing.

These two statements are contradictory.

While I'm not a fan of many things Uber does, this was something that was groundbreaking at the time, less than 10 years ago. If you lived in a big city before Uber/Lyft/etc you have fond memories of getting ripped off and taken advantage of, taking bad routes, dangerously manuvering through traffic, and either having to walk to a main thoroughfare or wait 30 minutes for the taxi that was supposed to be dispatched in 10 when you called for one. And good luck having anything come out of a complaint to the city over violations of passenger rights laws.

Now, regardless of what the complaints are against Uber, you can get a way more affordable ride, at a fixed price, on a mapped route, whose livelihood actually depends on how good they are (ratings), and know when/where your ride is almost as soon as you order it.

Even now where you'd expect taxi companies to take a stance to provide better services, they're devoting more resources to lobbying local government to control "ride share" companies. Mean while, all they'd have to do is provide a rating system, fixed prices over mapped routes, and an app to order a taxi and I'd be happy. Just enforcing that they use some direction service that can route around traffic would probably be enough for me. Instead, it seems they prey on locations full of non city tourist (like airports, train station, and attractions) that don't know any better.

Uber has undoubtedly done bad things, but to say they aren't a technology company and that what they did (and still are doing) isn't groundbreaking is wrong.

criticalpotato6• 8 years ago

Not to get nitpicky here but the statements are not in contradiction - one is stating what was the "technological breakthrough" of Uber and another is stating that their disruption of the industry they wanted to affect hasn't really gone their (or anyone else's) way. I'm not really sure if that what they created in the industry (taxis) and what their basically core and original product is (app which connects drivers and customers) are in contradiction here.

Good comparisons imo in regards to the disruption if that bothers here would be something like PayPal or even AirBnB which disrupted the industries they work within, and did it in a way that created positive progress and actually both companies are still on route to making that disruption of old wasteful industries better - Uber didn't do this and has long given up on anything except trying to burn as much money as possible (just a personal opinion).

Yes Uber (and Lyft etc) did a disruption in what you mentioned and I fully agree with your points on the issues with taxi traffic previously (and to some extent still, even with these lovely ride sharing companies). However one has to simply wonder if all that would've been possible with just providing product for taxi companies (and individuals) offering the benefits of this disruption - mapped rides with feedback system and pre-determined rates. Also what has to be taken into account here is that some of these features already existed within the industry, while maybe not in US they still existed.

The ride thing, I agree here albeit Uber has been, and still is the most expensive option (in a lot of countries it's even more expensive than those taxis taking the bad routes etc). Mapped routes (aka GPS) isn't Uber invention btw, it's called navigation and has been there since 1995. The rating system works (technically) and gives an incentive for the drivers which I think think all can agree is a good thing. Then again what if someone just came up with app that provides feedback system and price calculations based on the length of the trip and variables in traffic and offered that to the taxi companies and individuals (and why not for everyone with a smart phone), would that cost 2,8 billion as loss annually. Dunno.

The taxi companies are taking a bad fight here admittedly and in no way I think either party's lobbying efforts are really making any progress here with traditional business trying to fight for the "fossils & fuels" so to say and the new players trying to not just enhance but break the existing legal regulations etc. Either party really isn't looking to create anything new nor improve, but more so at the end just fighting for the money, and well guess it's business but I agree here that the traditional taxis really aren't helping their case either.

To say Uber isn't a technology company is a thin red line imo, it's not a technology company as Google nor Stripe, they aren't really doing technological innovations nor products but more so sociological and business related disruptions. Their app might've been the first there and they might've jumped on every single branch of technology from aerospace to AI and food delivery. What I mean with this is that their innovations within the technology space have been rather miniscule (in comparison to other companies that actually work with technology, or Dominos for that matter of working with food delivery and through that in hospitality) when taken into comparison with the massive impact they seem to have in the industry. Or would you consider saying that naming a product which essentially is a standard equipment in cars, albeit it's fancy name of UberKIDS, a child safety seat (and not a fancy high-tech one, just having that in a car) is a technological breakthrough or, well anything technological? I don't know, just tossing my 5 cents in the pool.

1369ic3• 8 years ago

The US defense collaboration we can only speculate on

Or you could ask. I work for the lab's parent command. The easy answer is that, if you look at the Army's top modernization priorities, future vertical lift (better helicopters) is right near the tippy top. And if you search up "ARL open campus," you'll see what the lab has been up to with respect to partnering. And that's just the lab. We have six research, development & engineering centers who are also partnering with people all the time.

criticalpotato6• 8 years ago

Cool, so what is the 1 million contract for? Just co-developing VTOLs so both parties benefit? Sharing information and knowledge?

Or does it have anything to do with US governments license on the partnering programs granting them "nonexclusive, royalty free and worldwide license for government use" for any IP and resource commitment? Which seems to be one of the top selling points of the program, I guess it could say "exclusive" also which wouldn't probably be on the front page of license information.

https://www.arl.army.mil/opencampus/sites/default/files/CM%2...

praneshp• 8 years ago

"Technology" for the company has been coming up with a mobile app to connect drivers and potential customers - something hardly groundbreaking

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16887276

SahAssar2• 8 years ago

Making a more precise geolocation feature does not make them anything more than "a mobile app to connect drivers and potential customers". Perhaps a well made one (with fancy geolocation like in that article), but not more.

omginternets• 8 years ago

To date, stacked co-rotating rotors have not been deployed in existing flying craft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamov_Ka-50

What am I missing?

ynniv• 8 years ago

Existing systems are contra-rotating, this research is co-rotating.

RunningRabbit• 8 years ago

It's about time i can order a black M1 Abrams to get me to the club in style!

trumped• 8 years ago

Are they going to equip all Uber cars with a standard charge of explosive in case one of their customer need to disapear?

willart4food• 8 years ago

I can see Uber doing R&D in autonomous cars, I see that an extension - and the next logical steps - for transportation as we know it.

But, when I read:

"The joint work statement focuses on research to create the first usable stacked co-rotating rotors or propellers; this is a concept for having two rotor systems placed on top of each other and rotating in the same direction."

I scratch my head: where is Uber's domain expertise in this?

monocasa• 8 years ago

Isn't Uber's most recent soft pivot in their pitch to their investors "cars on the road are overrated, the future's all about flying taxis"?

I just hope this isn't DARPA subsidising Uber's questionable at best business model.

sp332• 8 years ago

I haven't heard that one (from them), got a link?

inverse_pi• 8 years ago

If you have money, you have domain expertise. They hired Mark Moore from NASA and Celina Mikolajczak from Tesla. Each of these people can hire an entire team of experts from NASA and Tesla.

jonknee2• 8 years ago

It's a $500,000 dollar research grant, I assume the military gives out a lot of these and almost none make press releases. Uber has talked about flying cars before, so that's the experience answer.

calcifer2• 8 years ago

I also talked about flying cars before, how is that "experience"?

SlowRobotAhead• 8 years ago

I find it interesting that Uber wants to do everything except find people rides.

I’ll continue using Lyft. Uber is going to either get lucky with something and also be the Uber Of That or they’re going to burn hard by forgetting what it is they are supposed to be doing.

dkdinesh749• 8 years ago

Wow....salute to this

wishart_washy• 8 years ago

And when the agreement completes they'll each gain +200 science.

dmix• 8 years ago

You can see a picture of the "stacked co-rotating rotors" on their partners website: http://www.launchpnt.com/

U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement

Related Stories