How Uber plans to help autonomous vehicle companies
What's the story
Uber is looking to equip its human drivers' cars with sensors to collect real-world data for autonomous vehicle (AV) companies. The plan was revealed by Praveen Neppalli Naga, Uber's Chief Technology Officer, during an interview at TechCrunch's Strictly VC event in San Francisco. He said this initiative is a natural progression from a nascent program called AV Labs that the company announced in late January.
Data collection
Need to test sensor kits
Naga said the company's ultimate goal is to equip human drivers' vehicles with sensor kits. However, he added that they need to first understand how these kits work and what they mean in terms of data sharing regulations in different states. Currently, AV Labs uses a small fleet of sensor-equipped cars owned by Uber itself, not its driver network.
Scale potential
Potential data goldmine
Uber has millions of drivers around the world. If even a small percentage of these cars could be turned into mobile data-collection platforms, it would give the AV industry a scale that no single company could match. Naga said the main challenge for AV development is not technology but data collection. He stressed that companies like Waymo need to collect different scenarios and access this data, which they can't afford to deploy cars for.
Collaborative effort
Uber's AV cloud
Uber currently partners with 25 AV companies, including London's Wayve. The company is building an "AV cloud," a library of labeled sensor data that partner companies can use to train their models. This system also lets partners run their trained models in "shadow mode" against real Uber trips, simulating how an AV would have performed without actually putting one on the road.
Data democratization
Will Uber eventually monetize this data?
Naga said Uber's goal is not to profit from this data but to democratize it. However, given the commercial value of what Uber is making, this positioning may not last long. The company has already invested in several AV players and its ability to provide proprietary training data at scale could give it a lot of power over an industry that currently relies on Uber's ride marketplace for customer access.