Robotaxis are on the roads of London, marking Uber’s biggest real-world challenge yet in a busy city built on a dense layout and countless roundabouts.
This week, Uber rolled out 15 autonomous Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles in London powered by artificial intelligence. The project is a partnership with British technology company Wayve.
As of now, a supervisor must be on board the vehicle because London regulators still do not allow full autonomy on the roads yet. And while the robotaxis can travel anywhere within London, they cannot yet make trips to the airport.
Kendall noted some of the challenges that Wayve and Uber faced in the development process in a city with some roads that are hundreds of years old.
“There’s many roundabouts, interaction scenarios, there’s more than 10 times more cyclists and pedestrians than you can see in cities like San Francisco,” Kendall said. “More than 10 times the amount of roadwork, so it’s just a constantly busy and evolving city.”
Wayve’s investor base, along with Uber, also includes Nvidia and Microsoft. Its chief competitor, Waymo, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has been mapping London with its vehicles, but has not yet rolled them out for public use.
In an interview with “60 Minutes” earlier this year, Kendall explained that Wayve’s AI differs from that of Waymo in that it does not map out a city before driving it.
“We train it on millions of hours of experience driving all around the world,” Kendall said at the time. “So this means when it goes somewhere it’s never seen before or that’s never been mapped, it can understand what’s in front of it and make decisions in real time.”
Wayve has driven its vehicles in more than 500 cities in Europe, Asia and North America, according to Kendall.
“That level of diversity, you need to have a system that can learn concepts, and apply them to things it hasn’t seen before, and that’s exactly what we’ve built with our AI,” Kendall said.
For 20% more than the standard Uber fare, a CBS News crew called an Uber robotaxi and put the AI to the test.
The vehicle operated autonomously at first, but when it tried to go through a narrow passageway, it eventually got stuck and the supervisor had to take over and drive.
For those who don’t want an amateur jockey, there are London’s famous black cab drivers who have required knowledge of the city. But their numbers have dropped in recent years, from about 25,000 in 2010, down to approximately 16,000 today, according to Transport for London statistics.
When asked if robotaxis pose a risk to black cab drivers, Sarfraz Maredia, Uber’s global head of autonomous mobility and delivery, said that in the short term, he doesn’t believe so.
“No, we don’t really see that as a near-term risk,” Maredia told CBS News. “So, the reality is the market is growing. And we think AVs are going to help take up some of the growth in the market.”