Uber Plans to Turn Driver Fleet into Sensor Grid for AV Companies
Original: Uber wants to turn its millions of drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies
Why This Matters
Could position Uber as critical infrastructure provider for autonomous vehicle industry
Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga revealed plans to equip millions of drivers' cars with sensors to collect real-world data for autonomous vehicle companies, expanding beyond current AV Labs program using dedicated fleet.
Uber aims to transform its global driver network into a massive data collection platform for autonomous vehicle development. CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga announced the plan at TechCrunch's StrictlyVC event, describing it as an extension of the company's AV Labs program launched in January. Currently, AV Labs uses a small dedicated fleet, but Uber wants to eventually outfit human drivers' vehicles with sensors. 'The bottleneck is data,' Naga explained, noting AV companies lack capital to deploy cars for data collection. Uber has partnerships with 25 AV companies and is building an 'AV cloud' - a library of labeled sensor data partners can use for model training. The initiative comes after Uber abandoned its own self-driving car ambitions, with the company now positioning itself as the data layer for the entire AV ecosystem.