Uber Launches Test of Autonomous Cars in Pittsburgh
CARS.COM — A new day for ride services dawned in Pittsburgh today, with Uber beginning a test of modified Ford Fusion sedans picking up riders and mostly driving themselves on public city streets.
Related: Volvo, Uber to Work in Tandem on Autonomous Vehicles
The public testing in Pittsburgh began today using some of about two dozen Ford Fusion sedans that Uber engineers bought and modified with mapping systems, radar, sensors and cameras. The partially autonomous testing is being carefully controlled, according to a report by USA Today. Only randomly elected Uber customers who signed up to accept these cars will be picked up by one (incentive: it’s free) and the roads the cars will use have been meticulously mapped by Uber researchers. A specially trained Uber employee always has hands loosely on the wheel ready to take over.
Uber took journalists in the cars for previews a day ahead of the launch. USA Today’s Nathan Bomey was one, and he said the Fusion “smoothly navigated many of the bustling urban streets of Pittsburgh,” but also noted that “on several occasions, the car handed control back to the driver when a situation was too complex for the car’s algorithms, such as when a construction vehicle was parked backward in the right lane.” He also said it was like being in the car with a new driver who meticulously follows every rule and speed limit. Read his first-hand account of USA Today’s test “drive” here.
Why Pittsburgh? It is home to Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center, a partnership announced last year with the city’s Carnegie Mellon University and the school’s National Robotics Engineering Center. Uber also has recruited many former researchers from the school. But Raffi Krikorian, leader of the Advanced Technologies Center, told USA Today that the city also is a good place to test self-driving cars, with its combination of hills, bridges, pedestrians, bicyclists, urban streets, railroads and variable weather, each of which pose singular issues for self-driving vehicles.
“We like to call Pittsburgh the double-black-diamond of driving,” said Krikorian, using a term for an extremely difficult ski slope. “If we really can master driving in Pittsburgh, then we feel strongly that we have a good chance of mastering it in most other cities around the world.”
Uber’s research into autonomous cars also includes a recently announced partnership with Volvo, which has its own aggressive self-driving program and will begin testing in Sweden in 2017. Others, from Google to Ford, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and GM (in partnership with ride-service rival Lyft) also have research programs. But for ride services such as Uber and Lyft, there is, perhaps, a more immediate business case for eliminating drivers.
