Items tagged with uber
You might think that a criminal planning a bank robbery would at least do a little research beforehand; rule numero uno is that you never rent the getaway vehicle in your own name. An alleged bank robber named Luca Mangiarano clearly didn't do his research. Police allege that 19-year-old Mangiarano robbed a BBVA Compas bank located in downtown Austin, Texas on December 18th. According to a bank teller, a young man in a black hoodie walked up to her station and handed her a note that demanded cash. She gave the man the money he asked for, and the man turned and walked out of the bank. Another bank employee saw a person fitting that description exit the bank and climb aboard an Uber Jump scooter...
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After over 10 million miles of miles of testing with its ever-growing fleet of self-driving vehicles, Google's Waymo is now ready for a commercial launch of its ride-hailing service. The paid service is called Waymo One, is available 24-7, and is accessible with an app (just like Uber and Lyft). Right now, the service is only available in the Metro Phoenix area, serving the cities of Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, and Tempe. The self-driving Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans can accommodate up to three adults and one child per trip, and at first will be limited to what Waymo describes as "early riders". Early riders -- which numbers in the hundreds -- were previously part of Waymo's...
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We're now getting some official details on a fatal crash that occurred back in March between an Uber self-driving Volvo XC90 and a woman walking a bicycle across the street. Preliminary findings that were leaked earlier this month claimed that the Volvo did see Elaine Herzberg as she was crossing the street at night. The report did not, however, explain why the vehicle still proceeded along its intended path, crashing into Herzberg. The official National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) preliminary report is shedding additional light on the situation, and confirms that the Volvo did indeed see the pedestrian. According to the report, the vehicle operator left the...
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It looks as though we're now receiving some preliminary findings on what went terribly wrong when a self-driving Uber Volvo XC90 failed to identify a pedestrian walking across a road at night, striking her at full speed. The impact killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg. The Information is reporting that the vehicle's onboard sensors likely did "see" Herzberg, but instead of correctly determining that she was an object that clearly needed to be avoided (either by applying the brakes or steering around the obstacle) it determined her to be a "false positive". As a result, the sensor suite acting as if she wasn't there and continued on its intended path (which tragically lead to the impact)....
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Something went terribly wrong on a Tempe, Arizona road last week, when a pedestrian crossing the street was struck and killed by an autonomous Uber Volvo XC90. The vehicle's sensors didn't detect the pedestrian, meaning that the brakes weren't automatically applied to prevent the crash (or at least lessen its severity). Perhaps more tragically, the human "babysitter" behind the wheel wasn't even paying attention at the time of the crash -- she was looking elsewhere in the cabin instead of keeping an eye on the road ahead. Now, a new report from Reuters suggests that Uber's decision to skimp on the number of safety sensors that continuously scan ahead, to the side, and rear of the vehicle to gauge...
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While Uber's autonomous driving trials are understandably on hold for the moment, computers Waymo is moving right ahead with new partnership to advance the field. Today, Waymo announced that it has signed an agreement with Jaguar to deliver up to 20,000 self-driving I-PACE electric crossovers over the next few years. Waymo's current fleet consists primarily of Lexus RX 450h Hybrid crossovers (which are being phased out) and Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans. "Imagine a world where you can take a self-driving minivan to the baseball game with family, and a self-driving I-PACE home after a night out — in both cases, a car perfectly suited for your needs," said the Waymo Team in a Medium posting....
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We were all stunned last week when it was revealed that an Uber self-driving Volvo X90 crossover struck a pedestrian crossing the street at night, killing her. While there was a human driver behind the wheel at the time of the crash, the Volvo was operating in fully autonomous mode when the accident occurred. 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, who was walking across the street (outside of the crosswalk area) was hit, and died on the scene. Uber's public relations team and its CEO were quick to offer the condolences and vowed to cooperate with the police in the investigation. The company also took the precautionary measure of removing all of its autonomous vehicles from public roads -- for now. A video...
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Uber and the autonomous driving sector at large are under close scrutiny after one of the ride sharing service's self-driving cars struck and killed a pedestrian on Sunday. However, the police chief of Tempe, Arizona, the place where the fatal accident occurred, says a preliminary investigation into the matter reveals that Uber is "likely" not at fault for what happened, and that it would have been difficult to avoid the outcome whether a human driver was in charge or a series of sensors and cameras. To be clear, there was a human driver behind the wheel, though the self-driving Volvo SUV was in full autonomous mode when the accident happened. The vehicle was traveling 38 miles per hour in a...
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We have some sad news to report in the world of autonomous vehicles. It was reported that earlier this morning, an Uber self-driving vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. Tempe is one of several cities where Uber's autonomous vehicle trials are taking place, with the others being Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto. While there was a human driver behind the vehicle when 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg was struck, the vehicle was operating in fully autonomous mode at the time. This is the first accident [that we know of] involving an autonomous vehicle that has resulted in the death of a pedestrian. Self-driving vehicles have been sharing the roadways with everyday drivers (and...
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When you think of Sony, you would probably think about the PlayStation 4 game console and digital cameras first and foremost (and if you're a bit older, maybe the Walkman). Sony is very diversified, and a report is making the rounds that claims Sony is set to launch a ride-hailing service in Japan. Sony announced its plans along with partnerships that it has forged with several taxi firms in Japan. image via wiiii Sony will work with Daiwa Motor Transportation Corporation and five other taxi firms. The goal is to launch the new ride-hailing company this spring. The six taxi firms that are working with Sony have 10,000 vehicles combined and provide services mainly in Tokyo. Sony plans to...
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Alphabet's Waymo and Uber have agreed to bury the hatchet and settle a lawsuit revolving the latter's self-driving vehicle aspirations. As a result, Uber will pay Alphabet a hefty sum (in the eyes of mere mortals): $244 million. But in the grand scheme of things, it's still a relatively small figure for Uber, which has value of $72 billion. Waymo alleged that Anthony Levandowski, who headed up Waymo/Google's self-driving car division, took confidential intellectual property (roughly 10GB of data files that were downloaded from corporate servers) with him when he left in early 2016 to start Otto. Otto was a self-driving truck company that would end up being purchased by Uber. Alphabet's thinking...
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Back in September 2016, NVIDIA first introduced us to a brand new ARM64 architecture called Xavier. Xavier is a custom octa-core processor architecture that features NVIDIA’s latest Volta GPU (512 CUDA cores). When Xavier was originally announced, NVIDIA expected to begin sampling in Q4 2017, with volume production slated for 2018. Tonight, NVIDIA announced that its first samples of Xavier chips are now on the way to customers. It's been a long time coming, but NVIDIA says that Xavier is the culmination of $2 billion in research and development, along with the hard work over 2,000 engineers. NVIDIA says that Xavier can process 30 trillion operations per second while consuming just 30 watts...
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Travis Kalanick is the embattled former CEO of ride-hailing service Uber. He stepped down from his post as CEO of the company last summer after investors sent him a letter demanding his immediate resignation (although he remained on the board of the company). Kalanick said at the time, "I love Uber more than anything in the world and at this difficult moment in my personal life I have accepted the investors request to step aside so that Uber can go back to building rather than be distracted with another fight." Bloomberg reports that Kalanick has long been one of the wealthiest people in the world, at least on paper. The former executive is now set to become a real billionaire for the first time...
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Malware writes are a shifty bunch. If anyone needs further proof of that, Symantec has it, in the form of a warning over a new Android "Fakeapp" malware variant that spoofs Uber, the popular ridesharing service, to cover its tracks. While it may look innocent, the Fakeapp malware pulls its usual dirty tricks, including the theft of personal and sensitive information such as credit card details. "The Fakeapp variant we found had a spoofed Uber application user interface (UI) which pops up on the user’s device screen in regular intervals until the user gets tricked into entering their Uber ID (typically the registered phone number) and password," Symantec explains. After receiving the pop-up,...
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