Uber launches self-driving pilot in San Francisco with Volvo Cars
14 December 2016
Uber is expanding its self-driving pilot to San Francisco, California, using specially-converted self-driving Volvo XC90 premium SUVs. This marks the next phase in a deepening alliance between Volvo and Uber after the two companies signed an agreement in August 2016 to establish a jointly-owned project to build base vehicles that can be used to develop fully autonomous driverless cars. (Earlier post.) These cars were initially tested in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The latest cars to be used in San Francisco have been built by Volvo and sold to Uber, after which Uber’s own self-driving hardware and software package has been added, most visibly in the roof-mounted control apparatus. Volvo Cars and Uber are contributing a combined US$300 million to the project. Both Uber and Volvo will use the same base vehicle for the next stage of their own autonomous car strategies.
These cars will drive around the streets of San Francisco autonomously, but as part of the pilot program they will at all times have an Uber technician on board to supervise the car’s operation.
Starting today, riders who request an uberX in San Francisco will be matched with a Self-Driving Uber if one is available. Expanding our self-driving pilot allows us to continue to improve our technology through real-world operations. With its challenging roads and often varied weather, Pittsburgh provided a wide array of experiences. San Francisco comes with its own nuances including more bikes on the road, high traffic density and narrow lanes.
—Anthony Levandowski, Head of the Advanced Technology Group, Uber
The alliance with Uber forms one part of Volvo’s three-part plan to develop autonomous driving (AD) technologies.
In January 2017 it will begin a project entitled Drive Me, which will be the world’s largest autonomous driving test in which up to 100 AD cars will be given to members of the public to be driven on real roads around Gothenburg, Sweden. Their experiences will be used to co-develop Volvo’s AD cars.
The second part is a joint venture with Autoliv, the leading automotive safety technology company, to set up a new jointly-owned company to design and manufacturer separately-branded AD and driver assistance software technology packages for sale to third party OEMs.
The new company will have its headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden, and an initial workforce taken from both companies of around 200, increasing to over 600 in the medium term. The company is expected to start operations in the beginning of 2017.
The third part is the ongoing relationship with Uber to build and co-develop base vehicles for AD cars. This deal reduces Volvo’s developments costs, gives it a chance to develop cutting edge technology and could ultimately boost sales significantly, Volvo suggested.
The cars to be used in San Francisco are developed on Volvo Cars’ fully modular Scalable Product Architecture (SPA). SPA is currently used on Volvo Cars’ top-of-the-line multiple award winning XC90 SUV, as well as the S90 premium sedan and V90 premium estate.
SPA has been developed as part of Volvo Cars’ US$11-billion global industrial transformation program, which started in 2010, and has been prepared from the outset for the latest autonomous drive technologies as well as next generation electrification and connectivity developments. It is these capabilities that attracted Uber to Volvo.
Sounds like they are going through red lights down in SF.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/14/uber-self-driving-cars-run-red-lights-san-francisco
Question is: what to do, try to fix it quickly or stop for a month or so till they get it figured out.
I wonder is it just a "silly bug" or some parameter setting, or something more fundamental that will take time.
Some sleepless nights for the Uber programmers coming up, I feel.
They need to have a set of charges ready if they start to kill or injure people (and it is their fault). I see no reason why a death should cost more if caused by an AV than a human driver.
I am not surprised at all by this, IMO, you have to push through. More interesting will be what the AVs do to traffic when they have them stopping at red lights and intersections properly.
Posted by: mahonj | 15 December 2016 at 12:46 AM
They did not have a permit. Also Uber say the red light issue was a human driver not using the autopilot. Electrek has all the details. However, it does make Uber look like an amateur.
https://electrek.co/2016/12/14/uber-self-driving-car-red-light-pedestrian-sf/
Posted by: Account Deleted | 15 December 2016 at 01:45 AM
Frankly, the way that everybody but Tesla approaches the development of self-driving cars is not going to work. They all have less than 500 cars on the road with fully self-driving capable hardware and 95% of them have less than 50 cars on the road. Tesla already has over 25,000 cars on the road with fully self driving hardware and by dec 2017 they will have over 150,000 self driving capable cars on the road and by dec 2018 over 500,000 self-driving cars on the road.
You need hundreds of thousands of cars on the road to iron out all the freak cases in the software that causes accidents. Tesla can do it safely because they can run their unfinished software in shadow mode and get all the real world info they need to see where the car would have failed had the software been in control. Until we see other automakers do like Tesla and install fully self-driving hardware on a production car that sells in hundreds of thousands per year they are not going to be able to develop the self driving software. It is really hard to do the code and without massive real world data to help the programmers focus on important issues it will be impossible IMO. Tesla is many years ahead on self driving cars as a result. The auto world will tremble when Tesla boot a fully functional Tesla Network in 2018 with over 500,000 self driving taxis each with a potential to drive 100,000 miles per year earning 100,000 USD per year. That is 50 billion USD worth of potential taxi fees in one year. Halleluiah!
Posted by: Account Deleted | 15 December 2016 at 02:14 AM
Is CHANGE and HENRIK the same person?
Posted by: HarveyD | 20 December 2016 at 09:02 AM