Uber Beats Waymo to Become the First to Launch a Robotaxi in London

Uber has beaten Waymo in the race to be the first to launch a commercial robotaxi service in London — a debut for the city. The autonomous driving is powered by technology from British startup Wayve, and in this first phase safety drivers licensed by Transport for London are still behind the wheel. According to the company, they do not control the vehicle and will eventually be phased out in favor of fully driverless cars.

For Uber this is an important milestone: the partnership with Wayve was years in the making, and being first lets the company set the standard for how thousands of Londoners will come to view robotaxis. It is also an early test of demand for driverless rides beyond the US and China, where the bulk of such vehicles are concentrated today (a handful can also be found in the Middle East).

Those who want to take a ride have to opt in through the app's settings. When booking an UberX, Uber Comfort or Uber Electric, a passenger may — but won't necessarily — be matched with an autonomous Wayve vehicle. The fleet currently consists of Ford Mustang Mach-E cars, with Nissan Leafs set to join them down the line. Servicing will be handled by Uber together with British operator Otto Car, while Wayve remains responsible for the autonomous driving system.

No lidar and no geofence

The most intriguing part is Wayve's approach. The company has done away with the geofence, the virtual boundary within which robotaxis usually operate. The startup contrasts its AV2.0 system with “traditional” AV1.0 and its hand-built software stacks, HD maps and rigid rules: instead, it offers a single trained AI driver that supposedly understands the surrounding world, anticipates risks and adapts to new conditions — much like a human behind the wheel.

Wayve's cars get by with cameras and radar but, as a matter of principle, do not use lidar — the laser sensor that Waymo and most of its competitors are betting on. In that sense the British company has ended up in the same camp as Tesla. That said, Wayve calls its system “hardware-independent”: the software stack, the company claims, works on any sensors and chips, and lidar can be added if an automaker wants it.

Wayve was founded in 2017 by two machine-learning PhD students from Cambridge. This year the startup raised $1.2 billion from Uber, Nvidia, Stellantis, Nissan and Mercedes-Benz; besides Uber, the company is developing driver-assistance systems for Stellantis.

The competition isn't standing still: Waymo has promised to hit London's roads by the end of the year, while Lyft, together with China's Baidu, will start in the borough of Brent. The divergence in strategies is telling, too: Uber is pushing a hybrid network of human drivers and robots, whereas Waymo insists on a fully driverless model. The companies still cooperate in a number of US cities, but they increasingly find themselves on opposite sides of the argument — to the point of rumors about an imminent split. Uber, meanwhile, is lining up autonomous-transport partners (Zoox, Avride, Nuro, Motional, Waabi and Wayve) and promises to invest more than $10 billion in the business.

Source: The Verge