Uber Opening Robotics Research Facility in Pittsburgh to Build Self-Driving Cars

http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/02/uber-opening-robotics-research-facility-in-pittsburgh-to-build-self-driving-cars/

by foobarqux • 11 years ago

263 142 11 years ago

terravion• 11 years ago

This seems like this should be easy to source... should we call the robotics institute? Cleaned out seems a bit hyperbolic.

NittLion78• 11 years ago

We're one step closer to Johnny Cab, though I suspect it will work a little better than the version in Total Recall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGi6j2VrL0o

loceng• 11 years ago

This feels a bit strange, no? Shouldn't all of their drivers immediately stop using Uber?

codezero• 11 years ago

I think individuals who are living paycheck to paycheck as Uber contractors probably aren't able to respond to the possibility that their job will be replaced by automation. Very few people are able to prepare for that kind of thing, actually, even if the warning is in the foreseeable future.

If they quit, what should they do to pay the bills in the mean time?

titanomachy2• 11 years ago

Uber's design inherently makes any kind of collective bargaining almost impossible. As long as money can be made by being an Uber contractor, people will do it -- right up to the moment that Uber replaces them all with self-driving cars. There is no picket line to patrol here, no way that the drivers can meaningfully coordinate with one another. Dispatch communicates with drivers, and vice versa, but there is no possibility of lateral communication between drivers.

It's pure, emotionless capitalism. Labour is now a commodity like any other. Depending who you ask, this is either the harbinger of a widening wage gap and the poverty that accompanies it, or a long-overdue development which paves the way for optimum efficiency.

anigbrowl• 11 years ago

Well, they could just switch to working for Lyft instead of a company that is actively trying to automate their jobs away, if for no other reason than to put some upward pressure on Uber's driver payout percentage.

stdgy• 11 years ago

By that logic, shouldn't all of the workers in [manufacturing|food service|sales|etc] do the same?

Virtually all firms are going to invest in optimal production/service methodologies in order to stay competitive and capture the largest margins. In the (somewhat) near term, that means replacing a whole lot human labor with automation. But until then, there is still a job there to be done and a lot of people that would like to have the money for doing it.

With that said, I don't disagree that the long-term career prospects of taxi driving are plummeting. I think many other careers are nearing their expiration dates as well, though I may be overly pessimistic...

monkeyninja2• 11 years ago

As scientists, we work towards a better future, where human does not need to work, and machine does everything for you, the only tiny bit of work human will do is to ..... be a battery... it is paradise...

billsimpson• 11 years ago

This doesn't represent an immediate threat to Uber's drivers, and I doubt most Uber drivers see themselves as Uber drivers in 3-5 years.

threeseed4• 11 years ago

Be serious.

Neither Uber nor Google have ANY experience making cars. They aren't the simplest products to sell. Complex regulations that varies city by city, state by state, country by country. And even then the minute you become successful the existing car manufacturers will simply jump into the market and swallow you whole.

Uber drivers have absolutely nothing to worry about.

orasis• 11 years ago

Uber and Google don't need to sell cars. They only need to sell rides.

ForHackernews3• 11 years ago

All the car companies are working on autonomous vehicles, too. I think you're right that Uber and Google don't know enough about building cars, I think the smart money is that somebody like Volvo[0] or Volkswagen will be first to market with a commercial autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicle.

[0] http://www.cnet.com/news/a-ride-in-volvos-autonomous-car-how...

ars3• 11 years ago

They have nothing to worry about.

First Uber isn't going to actually ever do this - programming is not their core competency, and they don't make enough to fund it for the length of time necessary.

Second it'll be decades before there are self driving cars, so the drivers can make money in the meantime.

Third, once the cars do arrive they will start with long distance highway trips, which is not what Uber does.

omarchowdhury2• 11 years ago

What is Uber's core competency?

krschultz2• 11 years ago

Google opens an Uber competitor. Uber opens a Google (research) competitor.

It will be interesting to see which one can commodize the other. I feel that what Google has built (self-driving cars) is harder to replicate, but Google doesn't have the killer instinct that Uber does.

If Android is any guide, Google would rather spread their innovation around to partners rather than to use it to build a killer first party product. I imagine Google will license their future self driving-car stack to the existing car manufacturers, Uber, et al.

toomuchtodo• 11 years ago

I imagine Google will license their future self driving-car stack to the existing car manufacturers, Uber, et al.

Tesla perhaps?

seanp2k22• 11 years ago

I think a self-driving Tesla would be awesome. If anyone could make that work well and sell it, it'd be them.

threeseed4• 11 years ago

Pretty much only Tesla. Almost every other car manufacturer either has cars in testing or they will have access to the technology through technology sharing.

serf• 11 years ago

>Google opens an Uber competitor. Uber opens a Google (research) competitor.

Yep, but I feel like one significantly outclasses the other as a research facility. Will be interesting to see what happens.

>but Google doesn't have the killer instinct that Uber does.

Why do you say that about the most visited site in the world? Genuine question.

krschultz2• 11 years ago

I'm an Android developer, so that experience colors my perception. But compare Apple and Google in mobile. Everything Apple comes up with goes into making their product better, and they will fight with every tool they have to make the iPhone the better smart phone.

Every time Google comes up with a high quality product (Google Now, Inbox, Maps), they do everything they can to ship it on iOS as well as Android. If it wasn't for Apple, Google Now & Maps would be just as good on iOS as on Android. Google doesn't use their cloud service advantages as a weapon to make Android better than iOS. They just want their technology in front of everyone, no matter what they use.

I see self driving cars as a similar market. Google wants self driving cars to happen. There are lots of good reasons, but from their perspective it is both a play for even more data, and it increases the amount of time we have to use Google products. I can look at ads even longer if I don't have to drive on my commute. Thus for them doesn't it make sense to license/give away all of that tech to everybody? It doesn't matter who manufacturers the car, so long as it uses Google's car software.

Thus, plenty of companies will make self driving cars using Google's software. Thus Uber will have plenty of access to self driving cars.

If Google was more focused on killing Uber, they would hoard the self driving software for their 1st party initiative. I imagine if Uber invents self driving tech, no one else is getting it. They are far more interested in the core product of driving people from A to B.

It's a bit of 'commodize your compliments' and the two companies respective business model. Google operates a scorched earth campaign of making everything around ad supported internet as cheap or free as possible. Uber and Apple are building businesses around charging money for the product they make directly.

WillNotDownvote• 11 years ago

Based on the past, in 2 years Google will have shut down their Uber-esque project.

Meanwhile, Uber will be spending money researching their core business and will keep pressing on with shipping, consumer-focused products.

puranjay5• 11 years ago

Google is the most visited site in the world because it offers a product that is significantly better than its competitors.

Google is yet to display the aggressive expand-at-all-costs philosophy of Uber. Despite all those privacy concerns, I still believe that many of the guys at Google believe that "Don't be Evil" mantra. It also helps that the guys who've been in charge so far - Page, Brin and Schmidt - are, at heart, nerds who just love technology. Page and Brin are mostly accidental businessmen - they were doing their PhDs, not trying to build the next Microsoft.

Kalanick and the guys running Uber seem to be more about business than technology. Nothing wrong with that, of course. This gives them the killer 'profit at all costs' instinct OP describes.

Plus, Google does about 10 things (maps, Android, search, Devices, Plus, video, cloud services, productivity software, Chrome, Chrome OS, autonomous cars, etc.). Uber does only one thing. That helps it to focus - a key ingredient of 'killer instinct'

lazaroclapp3• 11 years ago

Say what you wish about the fractured Android ecosystem, but it managed to get >84% of the market-share vs <12% for iOS, despite having arrived later and being (at least in its earlier incarnations, before Android 4.x) a much less polished product. Samsung alone has more users than Apple does. Spreading their innovation around to partners was a killer move from Google the same as selling their software to IBM clones was a killer move for Microsoft.

Note: Not arguing that Apple's strategy was unsuccessful in the least, but Google wouldn't have been able to beat Apple at their own game (integrated hardware-software luxury-branded product) at the time of the iPhone/Android release.

ams6110• 11 years ago

Android phones are cheaper than iPhones. That's all it is.

rnovak• 11 years ago

iOS has a 42.5% market share[1], where are you getting your info from?

[1]https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share...

thejosh• 11 years ago

Lol, 84% in what countries?

Looking at our web stats across our clients, android isn't even a drop in the bucket compared to iOS.

Having a large market share in third world countries who won't buy your app isn't much of a win.

puranjay5• 11 years ago

It's because of the cost, nothing else. Everyone I know would switch to iPhone in a heartbeat if they had the Rs. 60k you need in India to buy one. My Android phone, on the other hand, cost me Rs. 13k.

Android thrived because shelling out a month's salary on phones is a losing proposition in third world countries (which have the majority of phone uses)

bsbechtel2• 11 years ago

84% market share is a loss if you don't make any money on your product.

Nogwater• 11 years ago

I'm not sure that I want to ride in a car built by a company with a killer instinct. ;)

moe2• 11 years ago

I feel that what Google has built (self-driving cars) is harder to replicate, but Google doesn't have the killer instinct that Uber does.

You need more than "killer instinct" to match a decade of research in autonomous vehicles.

What you call "killer instinct" I would call delusional or "dumb money".

soup10• 11 years ago

Self-driving cars is one of many research projects for google, and it's far from their core competency. If they have money to spend and are very focused on this. I wouldn't count Uber out.

PeterisP• 11 years ago

I probably agree on your viewpoint, but it's not like Google really has an advantage of "a decade of research" over everyone else.

They do have a serious advantage, but a the vast majority of benefits of this decade of research is not developed and kept by Google in-house. Key parts of it are either included in non-core components (sensor hardware, commodity electronics) that are used also in other applications (such as computer vision applications in manufacturing industry robotics) and Uber can simply buy that from other companies; or in publicly available academic research and data resources.

In terms of actual competitive advantage in self-driving cars, I'd say that Google has the following things - (a) a vast store of high-precision mapping and laser scan data that nobody else has; (b) a 1 (2?) year gap in pure research between what they have and what has been openly published by someone; and (c) a bunch of engineering expertise and experimentation experience that Uber doesn't have but some others do -e.g. many major car manufacturers. An impressive gap, but one that can be overcome in acouple years if you're serious about it.

refulgentis• 11 years ago

More like, my ex-cofounder created Facebook, so I rage-opened a terminal and typed in `mkdir facebook_killer && cd facebook_killer && git init`

sschueller• 11 years ago

"Uber opens a Google (research) competitor" with money it got from Google ($258 million)

tjbarbour• 11 years ago

Its a race between UBER building/acquiring self-driving capabilities vs. Google spreading to all the markets.

Sadly, as much legislative power as Google may have, I think we may be in an age where its easier to create the technology of self-driving cars then to get through the political/regulatory red-tape that UBER has been fighting through for years. That's probably an exaggeration, but given the how many other companies are dabbling in the self-driving space now, it may be less innovative than a few years back. On the other hand, I don't thing political/regulatory barriers are any easier to get through.

At least we have two big players trying to solve a big problem, so hopefully we'll benefit in the end.

lettergram• 11 years ago

Even spreading it around will work in Google's favor in this case. In this case, it seems Google's goal would be gathering transportation (and obtain tracking information). Thus they could undercut Uber prices.

ignoramous• 11 years ago

Google doesn't spread innovation around to partners [0]... the terms of OHA, and the terms of Play Store are strongly in favour of Google and effects any competitor [1] that forks Android without Google's blessing.

The Play Store terms range from absurd to downright ridiculous.

[0] http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/22/google-open-when-convenient... [1] http://marketingland.com/acer-incident-revives-conspiracy-th...

seanp2k22• 11 years ago

I'm imagining a future where there are self-driving busses that route themselves based on where people are and where they want to go. For a dense urban area, I think this has real potential to increase route efficiency and bus utilization while decreasing crowding and unpopulated bus trips.

sinatra• 11 years ago

Bus routes/schedules influence riders' behavior (People reach a bus stop at the time when they expect their bus to arrive). If buses try to automatically adjust route and timing based on riders' needs, riders will start showing up whenever and wherever they want. That makes me feel that the buses may become less utilized, not more.

1971genocide• 11 years ago

I do not think so, Many times bus routes are created without thinking about traffic. An app like that that dynamically updates based on where the "blob" of riders are would be awesome.

Symmetry• 11 years ago

I think there's a lot of potential for van-sized automated transit systems. Carrying 4 people gets you most of the fuel efficiency savings of a bus but without the big inefficiencies when you've only got one passenger on an unpopular route.

JMill• 11 years ago

Bridj [1] is a Boston startup exploring this opportunity. Here's a recent article. [2]

[1] http://www.bridj.com/ [2] https://www.bostonherald.com/business/business_markets/2015/...

(I have no association with the company.)

Qworg• 11 years ago

Actual Uber announcement: http://blog.uber.com/carnegie-mellon

I'm not sure a "partnership" qualifies as "cleaning out".

enahs-sf• 11 years ago

I find it interesting that Google will probably mint a nice ROI from it's Uber investment and ostensibly dump it all right back into research for robotic cars (I get this isn't how it works, but the idea is novel). CMU has some of the most brilliant minds in robotics - It should be very interesting to see who wins this arms race.

zobzu• 11 years ago

Heh so thats what this uber job offer was about.. i should have replied! ;)

clientbiller• 11 years ago

Sniff Sniff... I smell a buyout coming.

ThomPete6• 11 years ago

So Uber is using low wage drivers to make money so they can invest in self driving cars to completely make the drivers obsolete.

Talk about a moral paradox.

akshatpradhan2• 11 years ago

I'm ok with that. These drivers will move onto intelligent work where they can get trained in less menial work. The only reason a taxi driver stays a taxi driver is because he believes he has no other alternative to make money. Let's get them training in customer service or creative work and give them human jobs.

ThomPete6• 11 years ago

I am not sure what you mean. For most people this is it.

Ygg2• 11 years ago

I don't think it will work out that way. If Uber dumps them cold they'll have no money to retrain.

Also I doubt taxi driver stays taxi driver because of all alternative opportunities he has.

EpicEng• 11 years ago

"These drivers will move onto intelligent work where they can get trained in less menial work"

Can you point to any time in history where that actually occurred on a large scale? Genuinely interested.

nilkn2• 11 years ago

It's much more likely that these drivers' children will move onto "intelligent work." The drivers themselves -- the ones for whom it's a primary source of income, anyway -- are mostly stuck in a financial rut. They don't exactly have the spare cash sitting around which would allow them to just learn some "creative work." Getting bills paid and food on the table for their family will take priority.

sixQuarks• 11 years ago

Things don't work like that in the real world. There is a very real problem when technology quickly makes an entire workforce obsolete.

I believe there will eventually have to be a minimum income that is given to every adult. There will be many people choosing not to work who are fine living off this minimum income. There will also of course be those who would rather work but whose skills are obsolete.

fatjokes• 11 years ago

Somehow, I doubt Uber spends too much time worrying about morality.

XorNot• 11 years ago

I would've thought this is a business problem - it's developing a product which cannibalizes their own market.

Uber's problem is that this is a big public announcement. And so what you have to be wondering is what all the Uber drivers are going to be thinking about their future today with Uber. There biggest problem in the next 5 years if they keep announcing self-driving car stuff could very well end up being that their competitors have an easy time poaching all their drivers.

swombat• 11 years ago

It's not cannibalizing their market, it's exploding it. Currently, I will use uber infrequently because it's fairly cheap, half the price of a typical cab ride (and by contrast, I would say I use cabs rarely, when I have no other choice). If it becomes 1/10th the price of a typical cab ride, I would probably use it at every opportunity, all the time. More than 10x my current usage? Yes, probably.

puranjay5• 11 years ago

To be fair, Uber doesn't seem to promise any of its drivers a 'career'. It offers them a way to supplement their existing careers.

I don't see how this is any different from factories replacing low skill labor with robots. As libertarian as it sounds, I would point the finger at drivers who think of driving as a 'career'.

mkempe• 11 years ago

Back in 1987, Carnegie Mellon already had robotic vans [1] trying to drive around the campus. They were slow-moving, so students had ample time to cross the road as they approached. I probably have a picture in a box, somewhere. As I recall a major issue was how to stay on the road. [2]

[1] https://www.ri.cmu.edu/pub_files/pub2/thorpe_charles_1988_1/...

[2] https://www.ri.cmu.edu/pub_files/pub3/thorpe_charles_1988_1/...

Animats3• 11 years ago

I was in the Navlab once. It had a crew of five - a driver, an operator, and three people in the back at rack-mounted workstations. They had to convert the thing to hydraulic motor drive so it could drive slowly enough.

Their LIDAR was very advanced. They had a 2-axis scanning LIDAR, with one rotating and one nodding mirror. So they had full 3D depth images. Most of the DARPA Grand Challenge vehicles only had line scanners.

Animats3• 11 years ago

That makes sense. CMU has been working with Cadillac on self-driving cars, and has demoed them in Washington DC traffic. The CMU/Cadillac car has nothing visible externally which marks it as a self-driving car. They may be closer to a production product than Google.

jayjay712• 11 years ago

I'm pretty sure they aren't partnering with CMU, but rather offering many senior scientists and faculty members lucrative salaries to leave academia and work for them. So the Cadillac IP still belongs to the university. In fact, that actually spun out into a separate company called Ottomatika (which has a licensing deal from CMU).

Animats3• 11 years ago

They are formally partnering with CMU. Here's the CMU press release.

http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2015/february/uber-...

"Uber and Carnegie Mellon University are announcing today a strategic partnership that includes the creation of the Uber Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh, near the CMU campus. ... The agreement also will include funding from Uber for faculty chairs and graduate fellowships."

monkeyninja2• 11 years ago

Imaging that, we can get rid of all drivers, must be brilliant...

omarforgotpwd• 11 years ago

Google probably wants to run a big data center that coordinates and organizes all the world's cars. A reliable centrally coordinated self driving vehicle network would greatly canabalize air and train travel and cargo, so the winners in this space will control the world's transporation network. Google will probably win, but either way the world economy will benefit massively from the reduction in transportation costs.

cLeEOGPw2• 11 years ago

Google may benefit from it, but it's not like it would be irreplaceable. Google would just have the advantage of pioneering a new market.

Besides governments in other countries (since I assume US will stay "wild capitalism" for longer than others) can just call an open competition for such controlled network management services and then be semi-controlled by that government.

It's not like google or anyone gonna have full actual control over who goes where even when/if such system will exist.

Zigurd• 11 years ago

It's interesting to see comments of the nature of "Google doesn't have the killer instinct that Uber does."

This is a fight over the businesses of logistics and transportation in general, and on a global scale. You can expect Amazon to join the fight. This is not limited to driving people across town, and winning is vastly more valuable. Nobody is going to hold back.

lkbm3• 11 years ago

I always felt like long-haul B2B deliveries (e.g., from warehouse to supermarket) was the most sensible starting point for actual use of self-driving vehicles on the roads. No worries about convincing customers to give up control, the extra equipment overhead is probably relatively small when you're already working with a massive truck, no stopping to sleep/eat, no tired drivers...

coldcode• 11 years ago

Self-driving cars in a world where all cars are self-driving is doable. Self-driving cars sharing the road with the morons I deal with every day is not going to happen any time soon, much less dealing with accidents, road closures, ice, snow, rain and the occasional angry politician.

ahallock• 11 years ago

This is irrational. If self-driving cars are overall safer than their human counterparts, why wouldn't we allow a mix? I mean, we don't ban human drivers because of all the accidents and deaths caused of human errors, so why would be not allow self-driving cars, even with some failures?

Lambdanaut• 11 years ago

This is irrational

Humans can be pretty irrational, and law unfortunately isn't enacted in the science lab. We'll just have to wait and see who wins on the political level.

lkbm3• 11 years ago

Self-driving cars sharing the road with the morons I deal with every day is not going to happen any time soon

It's already happening, and they seem to be working pretty well. The most difficult issue is going to be politians.

Intoo• 11 years ago

soon techcrunch headlines would be: UBER DRIVERS LAID-OFF, REPLACED BY SELF-DRIVING CARS

fspacef• 11 years ago

Either way, Google vs. Uber means cheaper cab rides for all of us...

Uber Opening Robotics Research Facility in Pittsburgh to Build Self-Driving Cars

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