“Movement is what we power” Uber plans to have autonomous cars with no human backup drivers in developed areas for 2019. Uber believes in providing ease to its customers so while speaking to the associated press Eric Meyhofer (advanced technology group leader) said Uber plans to have autonomous vehicles and with carrying the passengers in the same time frame as its competitors. So keeping this in mind Uber started to work for autonomous vehicles. Let’s know more about Uber plans for autonomous cars without human backup drivers For 2019.
About Uber
Uber is a technology-based company that is mainly famous for providing safe and sound rides to passengers through its car services. Uber not only provides car services but it also offers other products such as:
- Uber eats
- Earning with Uber
- Health care
Uber connects technology to its services to make it easier for the drivers and passengers to connect each other with this Uber has developed its mobile app through which the passengers can easily book their rides and select their destination point.
What are Autonomous vehicles?
Autonomous vehicles are known as driverless vehicles these vehicles work independently without the interaction of any human because they work according to the principle of artificial intelligence through which they can sense the surroundings and take decisions independently. Uber plans to have autonomous vehicles for 2019 which will not even require human drivers so for performing this task Uber probably buys autonomous vehicles of level 5 which are fully
automated based on 5G due to which the vehicles will also adopt the feature of communication with roads, cars, and passengers, etc,
UBER’S PLAN:
Uber decided to have fully autonomous vehicles for which they require proper testing because they also have to compete with their competitors in the time frame, speed, and incident analysis. Uber planned to have human drivers in backup for the assistance of vehicles because they cannot directly apply fully automated vehicles with passenger rides until these vehicles are proved to be safe. Uber began testing its self-driving cars in 2016 in a few cities such as Pittsburg and San Francisco. The testing of autonomous cars by Uber was stopped in California due to a DMV permit.
Steps towards success
After successful testing in a few cities, Uber started to test more and more vehicles with passengers and human drivers as backups. The plan was moving towards success slowly and gradually because after testing these vehicles in different cities in United States Uber earned 80,000 miles per week and 50,000 paid rides which is a big number during the testing stage of this mind-blowing idea. To import autonomous vehicles from different companies Uber signed a deal of 24,000 autonomous cars from “Volvo”. In this way by 2019 Uber’s plan for autonomous cars became successful.
Drawbacks of autonomous vehicles
Many incidents were being recorded to Uber with an autonomous vehicle, few of those incidents are described as under:
- A person was hit by the self-driving car of Uber because of the irresponsibility of the backend engineer whose duty was to look after the self-driving car but he was busy with television drama so he did not take care and the life of a person was wasted. This was the first incident while testing the autonomous car in Arizona due to which the testing of these self-driving cars was banned Arizona.
- An autonomous car of Uber was traveling at 40 mph speed at night, the car was not having the function of observing crosswalks and a bicycle rider was passing from the crosswalks the vehicle did not recognize the person and hit the bicycle due to which the bicycle rider died.
Rather than the accidents the general drawbacks of autonomous cars can be described as under:
- Technical errors can occur.
- Anybody can hack the vehicle.
- Weather issues may affect the performance of car.
- Maintenance issues.
Does Uber still use autonomous vehicles?
Due to a few issues like accidents and criminal theft conspiracies, Uber decided to sell its autonomous vehicles to another startup company known as “Aurora technologies” a San Francisco based company. The deal between Uber and Aurora technologies include a factor that autonomous vehicles of Aurora technologies will be used for rides through Uber. The issues of Uber were under investigation after the investigations Uber resumed its autonomous cars but at a very lower extent.
Conclusion
The autonomous vehicles can be considered as safe, emerging and reliable technology but Level of automation should be kept low because human driver backup is very necessary for driving safely due to the removal of technical errors or weather issues due to which the vehicle start working properly. Uber’s autonomous car without human backup drivers for 2019 mission was completed during 2019 but after that the downfall of this technology Uber failed in its mission of Autonomous cars.
