🚗Uber Deploys Autonomous Vans for Data Collection
Uber's AV Lab: Gathering Data for Dozens of Robotaxi Startups
TL;DR
Uber is deploying vehicles with autonomous driving hardware on its ride-hail network, generating data for dozens of robotaxi startups. The fleet will collect at least 2 million miles monthly by year-end.
Uber has started a new project where it deploys manually driven vehicles equipped with autonomous driving technology to gather valuable data for its robotaxi partners. This move aims to accelerate the development and deployment of self-driving cars, especially since Uber sold off its AV division in 2020 after a fatal accident. The company's ride-hail network handles 40 million trips daily, providing countless 'edge' cases that will be used to generate data for the AV Lab project. By year-end, the fleet is expected to collect at least 2 million miles of driving data monthly.
Key Points
The project aims to generate at least 2 million miles of driving data each month by the end of this year.
Partners like Wayve, WeRide, Nuro, Waabi, and others will receive free driving data from Uber's fleet.
Uber sold its AV division in 2020 after a self-driving car killed a pedestrian in Arizona.
The company's ride-hail network fulfills 40 million trips daily, providing valuable 'edge' cases for the project.
Uber announced a new initiative called Autonomous Solutions earlier this year to provide training data.
Why It Matters
If you're working on autonomous vehicle technology or scaling a robotaxi business, Uber's AV Lab is generating massive amounts of driving data. This can help partners improve their own vehicles and scale faster. However, the free data only benefits those above ~100K read IOPS per instance, making it less useful for smaller databases.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does this matter?
If you're working on autonomous vehicle technology or scaling a robotaxi business, Uber's AV Lab is generating massive amounts of driving data. This can help partners improve their own vehicles and scale faster. However, the free data only benefits those above ~100K read IOPS per instance, making it less useful for smaller databases.
What happened?
Uber is deploying vehicles with autonomous driving hardware on its ride-hail network, generating data for dozens of robotaxi startups. The fleet will collect at least 2 million miles monthly by year-end.
Comments
Be the first to comment
Enjoyed this article?
Get it daily. 7am. Free. Reads in 5 minutes.
Join 3,041 builders reading daily.