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They hired away almost half of CMUs robotics department. That's gotta be expensive. They are building (in the city no less) an autonomous driving test track/fac

They hired away almost half of CMUs robotics department. That's gotta be expensive. They are building (in the city no less) an autonomous driving test track/facility. That's also gotta be expensive. Human drivers are just a brief stepping-stone.

assface 10y ago
I can't go into details, but it wasn't that much. The public number for "buying" CMU's NREC is $5.5 million. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/magazine/uber-would-like-to-buy-your-robotics-department.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/magazine/uber-would-like-t...
- alttab 10y ago
  As least we know there was an assface on the inside. Edit: username?
- jayjay71 10y ago
  That $5.5 million was a gift to Carnegie Mellon, I believe mostly for public relations. It does not include salaries, bonuses, or operating costs for Uber's Advanced Technology Center. The real cost was/is much higher than that.
aetherson 10y ago
Just to be clear: If you spend $1B on actual physical vehicles or whatever (let's say... 500 $2M vehicles), then if you have 200 employees with an average pay of say $500k per year, then you could pay them all for a decade with another $1B, meaning that you'd have spent less than 1/6th of the funding they've taken to date, or still have $1.5B left of the Saudi Royal Family's hard earned money. More briefly: no, obviously they are not spending their money on an autonomous driving program.