Uber’s Self Driving Cars Open To Public In San Francisco, Here Is How You Can Expereince It Too

Uber's self-driving cars have finally arrived for public in San Francisco. In the latest expansion of Uber's pilot project, the autonomous vehicle will start picking passengers in the city. The car is a Volvo XC90 fitted with top mounted lidar units; roof mounted an antenna to provide GPS signals, and side & rear facing cameras to provide a complete 360-degree view. It is also equipped with a complete leather interior and has front facing camera that captures both short range and long range objects such as braking vehicles, traffic lights, crossing pedestrians, etc.

In spite of such stunning specs, the self-driving car will not operate with complete autonomy. The vehicle will have a safety driver to handle manual driving and a test engineer to monitor the progress. Uber customers in San Francisco who request UberX using the regular Uber app may find that an Uber self-driving car is their next ride. Uber had carried out similar tests in Pittsburgh to test the autonomous cars, as reported by BBC.

There is a huge difference in both the testing, though. The Pittsburgh testing was done using the second generation Fords whereas the ones used in San Francisco are third generation autonomous vehicles.

"The car is one of the reasons we're really excited about this partnership, it's a really tremendous vehicle," Matt Sweeney, Uber ATG Head of Product  stated, as reported by TechCrunch.

Uber has a partnership with Volvo to built vehicles whereas the Ford was a simply procured item. Uber and Volvo are trying to combine their respective expertise to develop next gen self-driving cars. At present, Uber's self-driving cars will operate in the downtown area with a handful of cars. In case you are fortunate to get an autonomous Uber, there is an iPad display in the rear of the vehicle through which you can start your trip, check your destinations and begin the ride.