Your Uber May Soon Be Driverless
Anyone who has paid a visit to the city of Pittsburgh knows how confusing and congested the roadways are. The three rivers that meet at the city provides drivers with a tangle of bridges, layered overpasses and lots of Pittsburghese road rage. Pittsburgh drivers are in a constant race with each other.
Surprisingly, Uber is planning on rolling out their first self-driven cars in the heart of Steel City.
Uber customers in the Steel City will be able to call up their Uber as usual, but end up receiving a special Volvo XC90 sport-utility vehicles equipped with dozens of sensors, cameras, lasers and GPS components. Although the cars won’t be completely self-driven — as a safety feature, all vehicles will still be equipped with a human driver to supervise matters and take control if necessary.
If Uber follows through with the self-driven cars, and if the Pittsburgh experiment pulls through, Uber will be the first multi-rider, driver less car breakthrough in the world. Uber and Volvo both partnered up in hopes to release around 100 self-driving vehicles on the streets of Pittburgh by the end of the year.
As a part of the first phase of the new Uber experiential, random dispatch of the new self-driving cars will be implemented. Call up your ride with Uber as usual, and randomly you may get one of the self-driven Volvos. If you’re one of the lucky ones, your ride will be free! Plans are in the works for Uber to eventually partner with other automakers for creation of the driverless car.
Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute has been busy with working on autonomous vehicle research. Uber has hired experts in the area for the past few years. The next Uber rollout is somewhat of a beta test for the new technology.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Danielle Nicole