If you are in Pittsburgh, you can order one via the same phone app.
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Still, it’s the first time such a service has been launched in the USA, and it’s seen as a major step forward for Uber and for the development of autonomous driving in general.
All went smoothly with the Uber driver and engineer making small adjustments every few miles.
Uber’s Pittsburgh self-driving fleet consists of only a couple of modified Ford Fusions, similar to the ones used by Ford itself in its test drives earlier this week at its MI headquarters. One Uber employee will be in the passenger seat with a laptop displaying the images and data coming from the car’s sensors and one will be behind the wheel. The major automakers all have driverless vehicle development programs, as do tech giants Google and Apple.
Since opening its Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh past year, San Francisco-based Uber has hired away 40 faculty members and researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and formed partnerships with Volvo, according to Reuters.
Unlike Google, which is also a major investor in Uber, the taxi-hailing firm has a large existing user base of passenger customers around the world, giving it an immediate channel for delivering self-driving auto services. The company has a strategic partnership with Carnegie Mellon University. Researchers built a minivan in 1995 that drove itself across the country and remained in autonomous mode about 98 percent of the time.
The company wants to put autonomous driving to the test.in a city already known for its driving challenges. While the start of autonomous vehicle operations in daily use is a big step forward, it may not be as big as it initially appears.
Furthermore, Uber says that these autonomous cars will bring an extension of their availability, which will then require more maintenance.
All seems to indicate that the impact of self-driving cars will be huge. The company now has six driverless trucks being tested on California roads.
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Self-driving cars have raised safety concerns, especially after a Navy Seal died while operating his Tesla in self-driving mode in June. Sixty people from the school left to work at Uber. Uber’s landscape is the whole of Pittsburgh, a major U.S. city with very steep hills, old narrow streets and multiple bridges and highways built through the middle.
