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Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

nickvec

Comments (139)

  • Animats
    > “The bottleneck is data.”This seems to be wishful thinking on the part of Uber, and also Tesla. Google StreetView data is probably sufficient. Waymo's expansion into new cities does not seem to be delayed much by the need for more data.Most of the reported problems with self-driving come from transient situations. More mapping data will not help with those.China has the Beijing High-level Autonomous Driving Demonstration Zone, where traffic cams and other sensors let vehicles see beyond their own sightlines.[1] That's been going on since 2020. That's the ultimate in sensing - full real time road info.The Beijing test area is getting some expansion. The new direction seems to be to focus on airports and railroad stations, so that driverless cars can be aware of congestion in detail. That makes sense.[1] https://sinocities.substack.com/p/inside-chinas-connected-ve...
  • ra7
    > The insight driving the program, Naga said, is that the limiting factor for AV development is no longer the underlying technology. “The bottleneck is data,” he said. “[Companies like Waymo] need to go around and collect the data, collect different scenarios. You may be able to say: in San Francisco, ‘At this school intersection, I want some data at this time of day so I can train my models.’ The problem for all these companies is access to that data, because they don’t have the capital to deploy the cars and go collect all this information.”You can’t be the CTO of Uber wanting to do AVs, and get the data collection requirement shockingly wrong.Waymo’s bottleneck has never been data. When they want data about a school intersection in SF at a certain time of day, they just... synthetically generate it and simulate: https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-f...Waymo is able to deploy with less (but targeted and high quality) data collection by having world class simulation capabilities. Not that they haven't collected huge amounts of data as it's no doubt important (I've heard their onboard storage is transferred and emptied every few days), it's just not a bottleneck. They have the most efficient operation in the AV industry.The best example of why data collection isn’t the bottleneck is Tesla. They boast about billions of miles of data, yet they’re struggling to put out fully autonomous vehicles.
  • nerdsniper
    I feel like they should have done this 6 years ago. Most AV companies already have tons of their own data today. But how would it work to install expensive LIDAR sensors on privately-owned vehicles?
  • jdeibele
    I'm old. Was anyone else's reaction to wonder what Uber was doing for audio-video companies?The original title says "self-driving" and that's much more clear.
  • samagragune
    "Our goal is not to make money out of this data" is doing a lot of heavy lifting for a company that just committed $10B to robotaxis and is taking equity in the same AV companies it would be supplying. The actually interesting part isn't the sensor grid, that's years away and has real consent, compensation, and regulatory problems nobody's talking about. It's shadow mode: letting AV companies sim-run their models against millions of real Uber trips without putting a car on the road. That works today. That's the product. The sensor grid is the press release. Shadow mode is the business. Also completely absent from this article: do the drivers whose cars become "rolling data collection platforms" get anything? A cut? A notification? A commemorative badge? Uber has a rich history of finding creative ways to extract value from its driver network, so I'm sure they've thought carefully about this.
  • JumpCrisscross
    How useful are these generic sensor inputs for AVs? Like, how much more valuable is a Waymo’s data for a Waymo than something Uber collects?
  • zitterbewegung
    Isn’t this a pivot I always thought Uber wanted to automate their whole fleet instead of having to pay people ?
  • anon
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  • LeoPanthera
    I'm honestly surprised that Tesla never took advantage of all the cameras in all its cars to do some kind of mapping project. I always thought that was incredibly valuable data. Sort of an automatically crowd-sourced street view.
  • Avshalom
  • 33MHz-i486
    I remember Travis Kalanik spouting the talking points about self-driving in 2017, that after Waymo, Tesla had the advantage because they had the best data, that they were going to crack self-driving soon. Then I remember Dara scuttling Uber’s entire self driving division in 2019.Self-driving is possible but it requires a massive sustained investment in custom hardware on the car, in real and simulation testing, in painstaking software developlment covering tens of thousands of scenarios, realtime remote control failsafes, fleet management capabilities in every city. Waymo is the only company that comes close to the right approach. All these other Elons, GM, Uber CEOs are just jangling shiny objects in front of investors. A moonshot on the financial model for what are otherwise mature stagnant businesses.
  • YVoyiatzis
    Correct. Smart move. Had Inhad the option to do the same for my car, I wouldn’t mind doing it (provided that I be compensated for it).
  • cheriot
    Interesting way to encourage competition for its competitor. A single, scaled self-driving company is a massive threat to Uber.
  • luotuoshangdui
    Well, if they are making money out of the data, they should pay the drivers extra.
  • abubakir1997
    The world is heading to a very dark place!
  • breppp
    There's a company doing this, and I don't think they were super successfulhttps://www.getnexar.com
  • vfclists
    Will they pay the drivers for hosting the sensors?Can the drivers charge a monthly late for hosting the sensors?
  • reaperducer
    Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for AV companiesSeems par for the course. Nintendo turned legions of Pokemon Go players into unpaid sensor grids for delivery robots.
  • AndrewKemendo
    I asked an Uber driver, formerly a taxi driver in LA, how he felt about the fact that his driving data was being used to build his replacement.He said he “didn’t care and besides what was he going to do about it anyway, it’s going to happen no matter what”I asked if he had ever heard of collective bargaining or knew about unions and he said no.I think we’re only about another generation before the only purpose for human labor is to train and check the outputs of a machine.
  • ChrisArchitect
    Related:Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four monthshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47976415
  • croes
    So once again the employees should bring the data to replace them
  • durgavisionify
    [flagged]
  • neuroelectron
    I mean, yeah of course they do
  • anon
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