Uber is the leading online transportation company that has its headquarters in San Francisco, California. The company operates its ride hailing service in many countries and is the popular transportation service provider across the globe. According to the survey taken in 2016, the company’s service is available in sixty six countries and located in five hundred and forty five cities, it uses a software program that will automatically assign cars to the booking request and calculates the taxi fare. The users can pay using their debit or credit card.
Uber and their self driving cars
With the help of the professors and students of the Carnegie Mellon University, the ride hailing company started building the self driving cars. Initially the company had several oppositions over the new technology cars, but with the awareness about the autonomous technology and other embedded services, the making of self driving cars received support from the government officials and the public.
Uber set up the ATG (Advanced Technologies Group) in Pittsburgh; it is a research and development hub that comprises of a team of dedicated engineers to help in developing the self driving technologies, vehicle safety and mapping. This engineering team is responsible for building the long term advanced technology and fulfill the mission of the ridesharing company to provide the riders a reliable and safe transportation.
The operations in the building of the autonomous vehicle comprise of the hardware engineering, software engineering, global vehicle program and the design, product & program management, general and testing & road operation services. The hardware engineering team will put the problem solving skill into test to reproduce new technologies from prototype to production. The team members are from a diverse industry background and have a passion for cars and possess keen attention even to minor details and take care of all the challenges that come while designing a reliable, safe and functional technology.
The software engineering team will include all the cutting edge innovative technologies that have to be embedded while developing safer autonomous cars. In the process of developing a reliable and safe transportation, the software team consists of renowned engineers and researchers who focus on mapping, vehicle safety and autonomous technologies.
Robotic cars are the future of transportation
The driverless or autonomous cars are the vehicles which are capable of sensing the environment surrounding it and navigate the vehicle without the help of the humans. These robotic vehicles detect the environment by using a variety of new advanced techniques like the computer vision, radar, GPS, lidar and odometry. The advanced control system in the vehicle interprets the sensory information surrounding it and identifies the correct navigation path, signage and obstacles.
These advanced control systems in the vehicle are capable of differentiating the sensory information by identifying the difference between the roads and other vehicles, so that it is very helpful for the developers to design the path to each destination.
There are significant benefits is designing the autonomous cars and the key aspect in the reduction of accidents caused during traffics that intern reduces the rate of deaths and injuries and the related costs associated- the lower insurance cost, and increases the capacity of the road that results in the decrease in the traffic congestion, relieves the travelers from navigation and driving chores, enhance the mobility for the people with disabilities and for the elders, consumers less fuel, lowers the carbon footprint and air pollution, frees the commuting hours, reduces the needs for a large parking space, and many other uses.
Autonomous cars in San Francisco
The ridesharing company has introduced the self driving car service as a beta program in San Francisco. The company has already spent 3 soli months in testing the autonomous cars in Pittsburgh with the passengers. The plug in hybrid Volvo XC90s and hybrid Ford Fusion are the vehicles built with the autonomous features.
Though it is a self driving car, the car is accompanied with two Uber engineers to take hold of the vehicle in emergency situations. One of the engineers sits in the driver’s seat and is responsible of hitting the brake or takes over the wheels, while the other engineer monitors the technical response of the vehicle using the laptop. So, when the rider requests for a Uber ride- they might even travel in a self driving car.
Speaking to the reporters about the driverless vehicle, the Head of the Advanced Technologies Group Antony Levandowski said that the expansion of the autonomous car service in the real time scenario helps them to improve the technology and functionalities of the vehicle. Being a busy city with heavy traffic, more bikes and narrow lanes, San Francisco will be a challenging and experimenting platform to exhibit the self driving technology for Uber.
Test drive
The ridesharing company used the Ford Fusion autonomous car in the streets of San Francisco to create the 3D map of the city and help the robotic cars to know the routes of the city.
In the test drive, the company used the retro fitted Volvo car in the South of Market. The autonomous car performed well by swerving around the complicated lanes and construction barriers. The engineers have added new features to the self driving cars to recognize the cyclist in the bike lane and to handle heavy rain. After analyzing the report of the autonomous car on the streets of San Francisco streets, the engineers said that the ride was safe and reliable that the test drive that took place in Pittsburgh in September, where the engineers had to take control of the autonomous car after every couple of minutes.
But with the autonomous Volvo, the engineers had to take over the wheels only three or four times. Riding the car in the real world with the riders is very important, because it is a must to analyze how the vehicle behaves with the riders or passengers during the ride. Because the people were hesitant to use the ridesharing service when it was first introduced in the city, so the company came up with different techniques to hook up with the riders.
In general the opinion about the self driving car among the Americans is different; some of them feel that the autonomous cars can be easily hacked, while some feel that the driverless ride might be dangerous. So, to give a good impression about the autonomous cars and to encourage the riders to hail in the autonomous cars, Uber is accustoming the riders; similar to what they did with the ridesharing service.
The company partnered with the Swedish car company for three hundred million dollars to design the autonomous Volvo cars. The Vice President of the Volvo stated that the company has ninety years of experience in the auto making industry and are well versed in designing cars, so the autonomous cars are designed with expertise professionals with years of experience.
While many technology companies are trying to build the self driving cars, they had to build the complete package of designing the car and integrating the autonomous technology in it, but in the case of the ridesharing company it is different. Uber has partnered with the auto makers, so the auto maker takes care of building the cars while the Uber engineers are responsible for integrating the technology into the vehicle. This makes the job easier for both the automobile company and the ridesharing company.
Author Bio:
Andrew Shah is the Digital marketing Manager of Zoplay. He is a writer and coffee lover. He has is a graduate in Computer Science and Post Graduate in Entrepreneurship and leadership from Ulyanovsk State University, Russia.