Uber's Ambitious Plan: Turning Human Drivers into Sensor Grid

Uber's chief technology officer, Praveen Neppalli Naga, revealed the company's long-term ambition to equip its human drivers' cars with sensors to collect real-world data for autonomous vehicle (AV) companies.

From Sensor-Equipped Cars to a Global Sensor Grid

Praveen Neppalli Naga described the plan as a natural extension of Uber's AV Labs program, which currently relies on a small fleet of sensor-equipped cars operated by the company. However, the ambition is much larger, as Uber has millions of drivers globally. If even a fraction of those cars could be transformed into rolling data-collection platforms, the scale of what Uber could offer the AV industry would be massive.

The bottleneck in AV development is no longer the underlying technology, but rather access to data, said Naga. "[Companies like Waymo] need to go around and collect the data, collect different scenarios." Uber's plan is to democratize access to this data, making it available to AV companies at scale.

A Smart Play for Uber

Becoming the data layer for the entire AV ecosystem is a smart play for Uber, particularly considering the company's past ambitions to build self-driving cars. By focusing on data collection and providing access to AV companies, Uber can establish itself as a key player in the industry.

Uber currently has partnerships with 25 AV companies and is building an 'AV cloud' – a library of labeled sensor data that partner companies can query and use to train their models. Partners can also use the system to 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.

A New Era for Uber

Uber's plan to turn its human drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies marks a new era for the company. By focusing on data collection and providing access to AV companies, Uber can establish itself as a key player in the industry and potentially make a significant impact on the development of autonomous vehicles.