
Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month - ghosh
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-08-18/uber-s-first-self-driving-fleet-arrives-in-pittsburgh-this-month-is06r7on
======
nkoren
Ubiquitous comment, as a person within the industry: there's a big difference
between cars that have a hands-free driving mode, and cars that do not have a
driver. The latter will be an absolute game-changer; the former can yield some
marginal gains in safety and congestion, but does not really shatter any
paradigms.

This is the former. The latter will certainly happen eventually, but is orders
of magnitude more challenging and a number of years away.

~~~
speleding
We don't need to jump to completely driverless right away, there is a
convenient intermediate step: The passenger can be the passive driver, and the
car would drive to the pickup location empty. As soon as regulation allows,
that step already gets you the major benefit of not having to "pay for the
other dude in the car".

~~~
bodmd
You'd need to verify that users have a valid driver's license. The problem is,
how do you verify that the rider's identity is the same as the user who
ordered the ride? Facial recognition?

~~~
jdietrich
No you wouldn't. Car sharing clubs like Zipcar deal with the same issue - they
hire out cars on a completely unattended basis. If a customer chooses to pick
up one of their cars and drive drunk or lend it to their cousin with a
suspended license, the customer is liable.

~~~
bodmd
Good point, don't know why I didn't think of Zipcar when I used a similar
service last year.

Looks like the bigger problem might be people suing over accidents where they
were distracted and forced to make a split second decision, when they
'reasonably' expected the car to be able to handle the conditions. (Not trying
to shift the goal posts, just sharing a separate concern).

------
sbarre
I wonder how Uber drivers feel about working for a company that is actively
trying to make them obsolete.

Not passing judgement or anything, just kind of a strange thing to
contemplate..

Uber kept saying they were disrupting the taxi industry by letting more people
participate when really in the end they're trying to remove the people from
the equation altogether.

~~~
perseusprime11
I always talk to the drivers about their feelings and so on when taking Uber.
Maybe my data is skewed but most accept it as inevitable and are not worried
much as they have other side jobs. The cab drivers are the ones who must be
anxious. It will be really bad if they cannot be retrained for other jobs as
it will add to the existing frustration around automation. We simply cannot
afford to leave people out as we move on to other things. Outsourcing moved
manufacturing jobs to China, our focus on climate and global warming will
leading to moving out of coal leaving coal miners behind, Amazon is automating
their warehouses, Self driving will leave cab drivers behind...So, how do we
create new type of jobs for these people? Humanity cannot progress by leaving
people behind.

~~~
taxicabjesus
> The cab drivers are the ones who must be anxious. It will be really bad if
> they cannot be retrained for other jobs as it will add to the existing
> frustration around automation.

I used my "training" \- a very expensive CS degree - to drive a cab. I
developed a nerve condition in college, so really I just suffered through the
program without becoming competent as a programmer. Also, I dance to the beat
of my own drum, and do not take orders well. My kuro5hin.org (RIP) story
"Humanity's Second-best Hope" [1] is about the seasonal job I had at Amazon,
just before I started taxi driving.

[1] [http://www.taxiwars.org/p/humanitys-second-best-
hope.html](http://www.taxiwars.org/p/humanitys-second-best-hope.html)

Cab driving offered me freedom to be my own boss. The cab company's rules were
reasonable, and easy enough to comply with. As long as I paid my lease, I
could go anywhere and do anything I wanted with my time. No one in the
company's administration cared if I took a short break, or a long break, or
spent the night in bed.

Something more important came up, and ridesharing ruined the economics of the
business (Arizona makes it easy and cheap for anyone to start their own
transportation company. The upstarts couldn't be bothered with playing fair),
so I don't drive around in a taxi anymore.

I think these money-losing "ride sharing" companies were founded by people
with delusions of grandeur and venture capitalists' money to burn. When they
run out of their investors' money, the realities of transporting people from
place to place will reassert themselves.

------
theandrewbailey
I saw one of these a month ago when I was biking around the North Shore
(downtown Pittsburgh). Its cameras on top were far more conspicuous than the
renders in the article, though.

This article said it would pick people up downtown, but how far would they go
to drop off? The golden triangle is mostly grid-based, but go elsewhere in the
city and the road topology gets jacked up fast (like Boston), especially in
the south and west. Its idiosyncrasies took some getting used to, after living
in flatter regions with gridded streets for several years (central Ohio, Salt
Lake). In those places, if you want to go somewhere, you start driving in its
general direction; in Pittsburgh, it's not uncommon to go in the opposite
direction for a while, since the roads don't connect that way.

The article also mentioned bridges being a problem. In Pittsburgh, that's a
big problem, since it supposedly has more bridges than any other city in the
world.

~~~
rando444
Knowing Pittsburgh, the amount of road and bridge construction that goes on
there would also concern me, not to mention the condition of the roads.

There's also a ton of roads that are extremely steep (multiple residential
streets with an over 30% grade) which can be extremely dangerous in the
winter.

It's an interesting choice of a city for this for sure.

~~~
johnward
I'm sure they chose the city for CMU but I wonder if the driving challenges
played a roll. Navigating downtown Pittsburgh is no fun if you aren't familiar
with it. I mean it's not really fun if you are familiar either.

------
Hydraulix989
Definitely not better road markings. I'm a Pittsburgh native, having spent
most of my life there, and if anything the immaculate roads here in NorCal are
a part of the ongoing skewed optimism regarding self-driving vehicles.

In Pittsburgh, you have potholes, ubiquitous construction (especially on
PA-28), bridges (and I'm not talking Bay Bridge esque suspension bridges
here), windy single lane dirt roads without markings, to say nothing of winter
(snow usually obstructs what little markings there are 6-8 months out of the
year), and a completely different driving style than in NorCal. Most people in
Pittsburgh drive trucks or four-wheel drive Subarus (indeed, Pittsburgh has
been a good niche market for Subaru -- they focus a lot of their advertising
there). In Pittsburgh, roads only have two lanes max in each direction (and
that's the highways). Even downtown has its fair share of dirt roads (near
Allegheny River) and brick roads (roads that are made of bricks). I was shell
shocked when I first moved to California and drove on the 101 with its 4
perfectly paved lanes filled with drivers exceeding 50 MPH.

Precipitation is a nightmare for self-driving cars' LADAR sensors, rendering
them completely unusable. Drought-afflicted SV has zero precipitation, and
Pittsburgh has almost as much as Seattle. Driving in snow is such a
drastically different task/skill than driving in perfect weather that most
people in California don't even know how to drive in Tahoe on their skiing
trips (and the "snow" there is maintained by humans!).

If anything, us Pittsburgh-based autonomous vehicle researchers are the ones
more grounded in reality. Elon hasn't even seen "the Turnpike" \-- it is sad
to say that the rather unfortunate fatal Tesla autopilot accident happened
here in Pittsburgh.

As aside, Sebastian Thrun was in snow-laden Boston, and he and his lab also
have a more realistic time estimate for driverless vehicles hitting the road
than TechCrunch.

Anytime anyone in California complains about the roads (and believe it or not,
people do complain about them here a lot), I just laugh.

~~~
Hydraulix989
[http://pghroads.tumblr.com/post/50986812907/you-knew-this-
wo...](http://pghroads.tumblr.com/post/50986812907/you-knew-this-would-be-
here)

Infamous Pgh driving scenario: "Left lanes need to exit right, right lanes
need to exit left, here's 300 ft, make it happen"

Also, there are a number of short merge on-ramps that have Stop signs instead
of Yield signs where you are required to come to a complete stop before
merging onto high speed traffic.

------
aedron
It feels like a lot of what Uber does these days is just hyping up the stock
price. Of course that is a very short term strategy, if your ever more
audacious announcements keep falling flat. We saw a lot of this in the last
throes of the dot-com bubble, before the inevitable implosion.

As for this announcement, does Uber have _any_ credibility in this field,
which combines the most individually complex AI, robotics and regulatory work
that has ever been attempted? Hell, in any non-trivial engineering feats?

Also, Volvo has very active ongoing self-driving research going on. I have to
wonder how much of this is Uber's supposed crack team of field experts, and
how much is simply a partnership with Volvo delivering the technology.

~~~
linkregister
They have acquired their way into credibility. They controversially hired the
majority of the CMU robotics laboratory in order to start ATC. They also hired
a number of Google self-driving engineers, including the former head of the
self-driving effort. Today Uber announced their acquisition of Otto, a self-
driving truck company.

The ATC is isolated from the rest of Uber.

Volvo has been working on self-driving cars for years; before the Uber ATC
effort.

Regulatory work is one thing that Uber excels at.

To be fair, Google also hired/poached most of its self-driving experts from
university robotics laboratories.

------
thearn4
Lots of hills, and will have plenty of ice and snow in a few months. It seems
to me like a logical place to test the resilience of a self-driving system
against some predictable corner cases.

~~~
tajen
I'm surprised by their technology:

> The company has been creating extremely detailed maps that include not just
> roads and lane markings, but also buildings, potholes, parked cars, fire
> hydrants, traffic lights, trees, and anything else on Pittsburgh's streets.

If one city requires that much work, they're not scalable. Even if we assume
the LIDAR on every Uber car collects the new data, the car will trip sooner or
later if it can't detect potholes.

Concerning the bridges, can't they do like the Kinect: Match the image with
depth-sensing lasers, so they can detect the boundaries of the bridge, stray
away from pedestrians, filter out fire hydrants and trees but slow down when
encountering other objects?

~~~
jayjay71
This is the way Google does it as well, and in my opinion is a fundamental
architectural failure. There's a reason after several years Google still has
tested in so few locations.

Delphi has a more robust system (in theory), but the accuracy isn't quite as
good. To the best of my knowledge Ford is also taking a different approach
which doesn't depend on super-detailed maps to operate. The technology to
compare the surroundings against a map is far easier than figuring out the
surroundings and then navigating within that (not to trivialize this - both
are extraordinarily difficult and nobody has made a fully self-driving car
yet).

But hey, like they always say in YC - do things that don't scale. Uber is
clearly pushing ahead faster than anyone else, and they have a hell of a team
behind this project.

Regarding bridges - to oversimplify the simple answer is they're far noisier
for the sensors (all of them, including cameras) and it just wreaks havoc on
the sensor fusion system.

~~~
Retric
You could drive down every road in the US for under 10 million dollars. So as
long as you can keep them updated I don't think highly detailed maps are a
problem. Especially if this is supposed to be a backup for GPS.

~~~
rayiner
Considering how often GPS gets confused here in DC, I'm amazed we are
suggesting relying on it to drive the car.

~~~
Retric
They are using it for navigation not lane following. You can supplement GPS
with dead reckoning for tunnels etc, but high quality maps let's a car be
aware of landmarks and then use them to figure out where in the world they
are. EX: With enough precision there is plenty of information in the picture
to figure out where it's located. [http://socialforest.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/04/Forest-Gr...](http://socialforest.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/04/Forest-Green-Wallpaper.jpg)

------
jbb555
I can understand self driving cars eventually being practical on long simple
roads.

But I can't even imagine how one could get to my house. My road has cars
parked on both sides. Sometimes vans. Sometimes they almost block the road.
Sometimes there is a car coming the other way and you have to look for a space
to pull into to so they can pass, or maybe back up 1/4 of a mile. Or hope the
other car does.

There are cones and roadworks quite often.

I have significant difficulty driving down there, I don't see how an automatic
car could any time soon at all.

This might not be an issue if _I_ owned the car. I could turn it off and drive
down there myself but an automatic taxi couldnt do that unless there was a
driver waiting in the car to do that if required. And if there is, he might as
well drive it all and save thousands of [currency]

~~~
rsfern
All these challenges are exactly why one would want to collect driving data in
Pittsburgh, it seems to me.

I saw a heavily instrumented Uber car driving down Liberty two days ago.

~~~
jbb555
I guess that makes sense. And they can solve issues and make improvements one
at a time untill it's good enough I guess. But I doubt that will be any time
soon

------
uptown
Are self-driving cars legal in the United States by law, or just due to the
absence of law? Seems like vehicular traffic has always had fairly tight
regulations around their operation, but I'm stunned by the speed at which cars
that drive themselves are hitting the road. Sure, we've had cruise-control,
and cars have been adding things like auto-braking and lane-assist. Have they
just taken that feature-creep further to facilitate self-driving under
existing laws? Or are they simply able to do-so because they all necessitate a
human driver to supposedly be alert, awake and aware? Maybe I missed it, but
to me this just seems like something that would warrant some discussion before
self-driving vehicles are allowed on the roads, even if the conclusion is the
same.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Wikipedia covers the legal aspects reasonably well, with a map of state laws.

"In 2016, 7 states (Nevada, California, Florida, Michigan, Hawaii, Washington,
and Tennessee), along with the District of Columbia, have enacted laws for
autonomous vehicles."

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Legislation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Legislation)

~~~
jonknee
Interesting that Pennsylvania is not on this list considering Uber is doing
this in Pittsburgh.

~~~
epistemenical
There's a pending bill:
[http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/billInfo/BillInfo.cfm?sy...](http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/billInfo/BillInfo.cfm?syear=2015&sind=0&body=S&type=B&bn=1268).

------
hokkos
What is smart with Uber pushing this tech is they have incentive to test a lot
with a human operator, they can earn money driving people during the test, but
Google doesn't earn anything when they do, limiting their tests.

~~~
eloisant
Google is already driving cars everywhere for Google Maps, so if they want to
test it they can put it in Maps cars.

Uber is not going to make anymore money with those than their regular service,
since they have to pay the driver anyway.

~~~
lorenzhs
Two safety drivers, according to the article, and the ride is free.

------
nxzero
As someone that follows lots of tech "trying to see the future" \- to me Uber
has the greatest hope of bring driving to the mainstream due to a number of
factors.

First, they have a lot of experience with litigation and working with local
laws.

They need to replace drivers, but unlike truck drivers - Uber will drive
anywhere.

Unlike trucks, there's the potential to allow the passenger to drive the car.

Many more key reasons why Uber's efforts are worth watching, but really do
hope they're able to make serious progress in bring autonomous vehicles to the
mainstream.

~~~
johnward
> bring driving to the mainstream

Did you mean self-driving ?

~~~
nxzero
Yes, that's correct.

------
jayjay71
I'd love to sit in one of those cars and see how well the cars can drive
themselves, especially during the winter. It's just a really awesome
experience being in a self-driving car - it'd be amazing if you could just
hail one with an app.

The acquisition of Otto is interesting. I think Anthony Levandowski is
incredible and the trucking industry is perfect for automation given the state
of the technology and for logistical reasons. But it seems odd that Uber wants
to branch out at this point.

------
ap22213
It's interesting that they chose Pittsburgh. Having grown up there and they
having lived in many different places since, I have learned to appreciate
having learned to drive on those roads, especially during winter.

Many roads in Pittsburgh, and western PA in general, can be very curvy and
have tight-radius. They're also often steep.

The on-ramps are peculiar because merging traffic must yield, visibility can
be poor, and since some on-ramps can have tight radius and be steep, it makes
it a little more challenging to merge. However, all of that is not that
difficult to learn. It's much more interesting when you add in a foot of snow
and ice and blowing snow.

Also, Pittsburgh is an 'older city' so large parts of it were built before
cars. Highways have been 'bolted on' in some places, especially the ones that
bisect downtown. Many people unfamiliar with Pittsburgh can get lost when
coming in from 376 because on entering downtown, there are several quick exits
and lots of lane switching.

It makes sense since CMU is there and a lot of robotics people, but
interesting nonetheless.

~~~
johnward
I imagine navigating 376 coming into Downtown out the of Fort Pitt tunnel to
be insane. I can barely do it as a human. Everyone is entering and trying to
cross the 4 lanes to exit on the opposite side with in about 100 yards of
roadway.

------
gmisra
> "Supervised by humans in the drivers seat"

Ah, borrowing from the Musk marketing playbook, just say "self-driving" often
enough, and enough uninformed people who have never seen contemporary luxury
assisted-driving features will be impressed. Calling out Autopilot as "souped-
up cruise control" is a nice touch.

> For now, Uber’s test cars travel with safety drivers, as common sense and
> the law dictate. These professionally trained engineers sit with their
> fingertips on the wheel, ready to take control if the car encounters an
> unexpected obstacle. A co-pilot, in the front passenger seat, takes notes on
> a laptop.

That doesn't seem very scalable. How many cars are in this so-called "fleet"?

Is there anybody working on autonomous vehicle tech that believes there's any
substance here, or is it just adverjournalism?

~~~
CardenB
The level of autonomy exhibited by these vehicles are much greater than that
of the Model S

~~~
gmisra
Can you elaborate? What driving maneuvers do you expect these vehicles to be
able to perform? Where is that feature set documented?

------
bennettfeely
Last summer I saw one of these autonomous Uber cars driving on a side road
when I was leaving my office in the Lawrenceville neighborhood in Pittsburgh.

Was tempted to motion to jump in front of it to see how the car would react,
but didn't...

------
nicwolff
Doesn't this upend Uber's whole model of non-ownership of vehicles and
rejection of liability? Unless the driver is just there to be liable for
having "allowed" the AI to intentionally hit something or someone!

Also, as a NYC driver, I wonder how aggressively a self-driving car could
legally be programmed to defend its lane. I'm picturing Uberbots sitting still
in traffic while streams of human drivers gleefully cut them off. City driving
is basically a game of chicken every 10 seconds; winning at chicken depends on
convincing your opponent that you are willing to have an accident.

~~~
wehadfun
It does. I wonder if Uber's accounting department really thinks this is a good
idea. If Uber has to pay for gas, spare tires, oil changes, cleaning, theft,
vandalism, insurance, moving violations, taxes, plus maintenance of what ever
gizmos and gadgets it takes to auto drive these XC90s they may find it is
cheaper to just underpay regular drivers.

------
astazangasta
This is a no-lose situation for Uber.

If it goes well, then Uber has suddenly pushed forward autonomous driving and
set itself at the forefront of commercial adoption.

If it is a disaster and many accidents result, Uber will set back driverless
cars by a decade, burying it under a wave of pessimism, allowing their current
business model to persist well into the future.

------
bogomipz
If the adoption of driverless cars succeeds this translates into less
automobiles sold by manufacturers to the general public. Won't the auto
manufacturers then need to increase the price of each unit sold? Eventually
wouldn't Uber's savings from no longer having pay labor costs be lost due to
auto makers increase in price per unit of each(now driverless) car sold?

This seems to be a lot exposure for Uber unless they get into the
manufacturing business which seems like a rabbit hole. This type of exposure
is the same as say a music streaming business that has to pay for content -
i.e your business model is predicated on favorable enough terms from a third
party in order to make a profit. And we've seen that the way around this is by
being vertically integrated such as what Netflix has done with creating its
own content.

------
wehadfun
What happens if someone is in one of these and it needs gas?

What happens if these things get a flat tires?

What if the police want to pull one of these things over?

Can drivers exit this thing at will or are they trapped until some computer in
California thinks it is safe?

Uber does know that their drivers do lot more then drive

~~~
stale2002
1) Uber keeps tracks of the fuel ahead of time, and goes to an Uber refuel
station automatically before it gets anywhere near low fuel.

2) The computer detects that the flat tire happened, pulls off to the side,
and autodials the Uber triple A repair crew.

3) This one is hard actually. Perhaps the cameras could detect the flashing
lights and sound of a police car, and automatically pull over? Or maybe there
is just an emergency pull over button that the passenger presses?

4) Aforementioned emergency pull over button.

~~~
wehadfun
These are good solutions.

------
n72
I wonder how this will affect crime. With a driverless car, if someone wanted
to hold you up, all they have to do is walk in front of the car, which will
then obediently stop.

~~~
794CD01
As opposed to human-driven cars, which keep going and run you over?

~~~
n72
If I'm in a shady neighborhood and a drunk or threatening guy or whatever
starts meandering towards me, if I'm driving I have the power to turn/drive
around him/accelerate or whatever. If I'm sitting in the backseat of a
driverless car, I don't have that option.

~~~
mdrzn
What if the car is already locked and can detect if the drunk guy hits on the
car? Would you be safe enough?

------
bogomipz
Can anyone comment on the connection between Uber a company based in S.F. and
Pittsburgh? Does this have to with proximity to CMU? Something else?

~~~
raphaelj
Maybe more open regulations, smaller city (they seem to be mapping all the
streets) or better road-markings. Or a combination of these three.

------
elmar
Forget Self-Driving Cars. Airbus Says a Legit Flying Taxi Is Coming

[http://time.com/money/4456617/flying-cars-taxi-self-
driving-...](http://time.com/money/4456617/flying-cars-taxi-self-driving-
cars/)

------
jdhawk
Ah, I spotted one of these the other day cruising around Austin. Pretty slick
looking vehicle.

------
seren
It is more a test run. It is self-driving but each vehicle will have a pilot
and a co-pilot.

------
mdasen
Uber has to work on self-driving technology, but in a certain way doesn't
self-driving technology seem like something that will eliminate Uber's market
advantage?

Right now, Uber is the go-to choice in most areas because of network effects.
They have the most drivers because they have the most users. They have the
most users because they have the most drivers. In a world of self-driving
vehicles, anyone with capital can buy a fleet to blanket a city. If you can
finance a self-driving vehicle for $400/mo, it's not that hard to launch in a
new city. Sidecar operated in my top-10 city with what seemed like 5 drivers.
That was too few and it was terrible (given that a lot of the time they might
not be on-duty). But if one could get 20 self-driving vehicles for $8,000/mo,
it's an easy way to launch. If adding new vehicles is as easy as going to a
local dealership and putting down your VC money, you could get more on the
road within a day to meet demand. In the early days, you could keep a close
eye on demand and over-provision a little.

Self-driving vehicles change the market from being one of network effects
(where Uber has a huge advantage) to one of capital spend. Uber does have a
lot of capital, but what if GM wants to get into the game? GM gets cars at
cost and GM has a brand that people know/trust (they're not some no-name
I'm-Uber-Too).

Worse, it's a market of variable capital expenditure. With cable TV/internet,
a lot of the costs are fixed costs (actually laying all the cable and such).
With wireless service, there's a limited amount of spectrum and a lot of fixed
costs creating the network. With self-driving taxis, it seems like the vast
majority of the costs are variable costs that go up with the number of riders.
There's really nothing stoping a city from having dozens or even a hundred
different self-driving taxi companies. I doubt it will be hundreds as it's
hard to run a good company, but it does mean there won't be a good opportunity
to push high margins onto consumers. An attempt at high margins would mean
another company scooping up that business.

I guess I just don't see how Uber maintains high enough margins in what will
become an incredibly price-competitive market where it's relatively cheap for
new players to join. If Sidecar could have spent $8,000/mo to launch in my
city with good coverage, they would have made users happy rather than
frustrated that there were no drivers around. They could have been successful.
$96,000 isn't a lot of capital needed to start up for your first year. A
Dunkin' Donuts franchise costs more than that to start up (from a little
Googling). At $5/ride, vehicles would only need to do 3 rides a day to justify
a $400/mo price tag. Even at $2/ride (less than public transit), you'd only
need to do 7 rides a day for that $400/mo vehicle. That doesn't deal with fuel
costs, but you can see how you don't need a lot of usage to cover the cost of
the vehicle. If you think about fuel costs on a Prius and a maybe a 5 mile
average trip (which seems quite long), you're talking about 1/10th of a gallon
or around 20 cents for fuel. A trip that might cost $15 on UberX drops to
under $2.50 at-cost for a service that isn't popular (its vehicles only do 7
rides/day) and way lower cost for popular services. So, Uber is going to have
to push its margins way down (and keep them down) to prevent someone from
wanting to enter a market that requires such little capital.

~~~
konschubert
> In a world of self-driving vehicles, anyone with capital can buy a fleet to
> blanket a city.

The truth is, that's also possible in a world of driver-driven vehicles. Just
pay the drivers more for a year or two, and the network is yours.

Uber is going to be of marginal importance in 10 years.

------
thevibesman
Anyone heard when "later this month" is? I'm going to be in Pittsburgh this
weekend; I hope it is later enough to try it out.

------
Animats
Well, they've got the right people on the project, and the right sensors. This
is ahead of Tesla.

------
irfansharif
great decision teaming up with Volvo for self-driving car experiments, Volvo
has an excellent reputation for safety.

