Online cab company/car sharing service Über has its eyes set on the world of autonomous driving if the latest round of recruits tells us anything. CompleteCar.ie recently reported on the firm's fight with German heavyweights Audi and Mercedes-Benz for ownership of Nokia's HERE high-definition mapping technology, but the latest news emerging from Philadelphia shows that the move is more than just about fancy maps.
Since the start of the year Über has poached nearly 50 employees from the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Centre. Carnegie Mellon is a research facility whose clients include NASA and the military and staff jumping ship to Über include software developers, commercialisation specialists and the former director of Carnegie's Vehicle Autonomy division.
Autonomous driving is something of a Carnegie speciality having won the first ever DARPA challenge for driverless cars and producing alumni such as the Chris Urmson who now heads up Google's own self-driving division. It is this renown within the industry that first led Über to develop a partnership with the university before convincing an entire development team to jump ship and move to a new 53,000 square foot Advanced Technologies Centre.
At this point is it unclear whether Über plans to use its new recruits to replace some of its 160,000 drivers worldwide or whether, in conjunction with Nokia's mapping technology, it plans to take a giant step towards driverless private cars.