Uber Opening Robotics Research Facility In Pittsburgh To Build Self-Driving Cars (job market, paid)

[AaronPGH]

daaaaaaaamn. power moves.

"Sources tell us Uber is hiring more than fifty senior scientists from Carnegie Mellon as well as from the National Robotics Engineering Center, a CMU-affiliated research entity. Carnegie Mellon, home of the Mars Rover and other high-profile robotics projects, declined to comment at this time, as did scientists mentioned by our source. Uber has “cleaned out” the Robotics Institute, said the source."

[MathmanMathman]

Conceptually, great idea. Wonder if a person will still be able to "hail" a taxi? Or must it be done on-line?

The potential is huge. Trucks with smarter computer drivers that never tire working at all hours. Buses and trains operating 24 hours.

[AaronPGH]

Originally Posted by ditchdigger

I can't help but wonder what kind of warm fuzzy feeling their drivers are getting, knowing the company is willing to invest a gob of money to "obsolete" them, sooner rather than later.

One of them is posting comments on my facebook thread about this such as "Driverless cars will never happen in our life time"

sorry about your denial bro. The thing is, if it's not Uber, it's going to be someone. Driverless cars are not an Uber-driven thing. They've been in the works for a very long time already, by many parties, and are already approved in many states. It's inevitable, unfortunately. And this is something many different people in many industries are going to have to cope with. Pharmacies are another.

[AaronPGH]

Originally Posted by MathmanMathman

Conceptually, great idea. Wonder if a person will still be able to "hail" a taxi? Or must it be done on-line?

I imagine this would resemble an advanced road-based version of the PRT system in Morgantown. Instead of taxi stands, you have poles placed around the city with buttons on them that hail a car.

[sskink]

Originally Posted by AaronPGH

One of them is posting comments on my facebook thread about this such as "Driverless cars will never happen in our life time"

sorry about your denial bro. The thing is, if it's not Uber, it's going to be someone. Driverless cars are not an Uber-driven thing. They've been in the works for a very long time already, by many parties, and are already approved in many states. It's inevitable, unfortunately. And this is something many different people in many industries are going to have to cope with. Pharmacies are another.

It'll be quite some time before we see driverless cars. Because when you add the complexity of these things being on the road alongside cars that are driven by people, chaos can ensue. It's not an application where a "good enough" engineering solution that appeases "most" of the market is going to be deemed safe. It'll have to be near perfect in v1.0.

Engineers have been trying to make a decent superauto espresso machine for years. That's a lot less complex than a car. But nobody's been able to make one that doesn't produce a shot that sucks.

[_Buster]

Originally Posted by sskink

It'll be quite some time before we see driverless cars. Because when you add the complexity of these things being on the road alongside cars that are driven by people, chaos can ensue. It's not an application where a "good enough" engineering solution that appeases "most" of the market is going to be deemed safe. It'll have to be near perfect in v1.0.

Engineers have been trying to make a decent superauto espresso machine for years. That's a lot less complex than a car. But nobody's been able to make one that doesn't produce a shot that sucks.

That is potentially a huge hurdle for driverless cars- that they can't communicate with drivers of other vehicles, or pedestrians, construction workers, cops, etc in situations where that becomes necessary.

[eschaton]

As I understand it, the biggest current technological limitation of driverless cars is they cannot operate in rain or snow, as it interferes with their LIDAR systems. Under clear weather conditions, however, they are already as safe, or safer, than human drivers (they have advantages over humans, like being able to see in the dark, detect objects from a further distance, and the whole not getting drunk or distracted thing). Of course there's also the cost aspect - these cars have hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment installed. Cost will go down with mass production, but it will take time.

That said, if you look at what car companies are developing, the next step in automation (adaptive cruise control and the like) is coming out now. By 2020 many companies plan to release cars which will be "hands free" at least some of the time, although manual control might still be needed some of the time. In 20-30 years it's more likely that implementation of the technology will be nigh universal, not that it will just be rolling out.

[airwave09]

Originally Posted by ditchdigger

Yeah, I get that. It's one of those If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck..., things. The webs between their toes are showing now.

I can't help but wonder what kind of warm fuzzy feeling their drivers are getting, knowing the company is willing to invest a gob of money to "obsolete" them, sooner rather than later.

Considering nearly every large corporation in the world is doing the exact same thing, I'm sure that their employees feel the same as those of other large companies.

[airwave09]

Originally Posted by AaronPGH

One of them is posting comments on my facebook thread about this such as "Driverless cars will never happen in our life time"

sorry about your denial bro. The thing is, if it's not Uber, it's going to be someone. Driverless cars are not an Uber-driven thing. They've been in the works for a very long time already, by many parties, and are already approved in many states. It's inevitable, unfortunately. And this is something many different people in many industries are going to have to cope with. Pharmacies are another.

Yep, and it doesn't stop with driver-less cars either. Almost every lower-tier job will be replaced by robots/automation of some sort in the next 20-30 years. If you spend just a half an hour researching the trends in technology, you will see that this is inevitable.

We are going to need to make some big changes to the economics of our society as it is currently structured, or there is going to be chaos as more and more people are phased out of the job market and made obsolete. People are going to have to be paid by the government to do something... anything really, or our society will simply collapse.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by airwave09

We are going to need to make some big changes to the economics of our society as it is currently structured, or there is going to be chaos as more and more people are phased out of the job market and made obsolete. People are going to have to be paid by the government to do something... anything really, or our society will simply collapse.

I've been worried about this a lot. I really only see two solutions:

1. We begin shortening the work week and ramping up the minimum wage to compensate. Probably we'll also have to detach health insurance from employment. Once we have a system where two people can do the work that one used to do and make a decent living, we can probably ride out automation for another few generations. The down side is not everyone might have the skills needed for the jobs which cannot be automated.

2. The government sets up a "national minimum income" given to everyone who is a citizen. From what I have read, this is much cheaper than you would think. After all, you can replace all government programs (earned income tax credit, TANF, Social Security, food stamps, unemployment, etc) and since no means testing would be required, a lot of government bureaucracy would just vanish.