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Otto joins Uber
- Robotard 10y agoFuck. Such a shame that Uber didn't snatch up Waze before Google did. This is such a fucking great idea!
- zump 10y agoEasiest money ever made. What the fuck am I doing with my life?
- lfender6445 10y agois otto using LIDAR or camera tech to for vehicle automation?
- uncoder0 10y agoLIDAR, IIRC LIDAR is the only way to go, imo.
- lathiat 10y agoI was reading one major issue with lidar is bad weather. Microwave can apparently do that OK but the wavelength is a trade off between accuracy, object size and weather/interference avoidance.
- jessaustin 10y agoIn fairness, bad weather is a big challenge for human drivers as well. Largely because we don't realize how much more difficult it is to drive with limited visibility/traction and don't slow down enough.
- bogomipz 10y agoI'm familiar with RADAR and LIDAR, what is the camera-based alternative to these?
- jonknee 10y agoThere's not a fancy acronym for it, but it's what most current lane centering tech uses (e.g. Tesla Autopilot). It's actually pretty off the shelf kit from Mobileye.
- revelation 10y agoNeither, they don't have a product. For all we know their technology stack is takeout food.
- jjguy 10y agoThere is additional context in the Bloomberg article posted this morning. [1, 2] Based on the timestamps, kinda looks like the Otto blogpost was prompted by the Bloomberg article -- even though the "agreements were reached" in July according to Bloomberg. 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12311559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12311559 2 - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-08-18/uber-s-first-self-driving-fleet-arrives-in-pittsburgh-this-month-is06r7on http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-08-18/uber-s-fir...
- bnt 10y agoMy thoughts exactly, but can't confirm.
- linkregister 10y agoThe agreements were reached but the press release wasn't until today. Also it is likely employees of both companies weren't informed until today.
- __derek__ 10y agoMaybe it's just me, but name collisions seem to be happening a lot lately. My association with "Otto" is Hashicorp's tool.[1] This announcement makes more sense than the one I expected to read. [1]: https://www.ottoproject.io/ https://www.ottoproject.io/
- astrange 10y agoAlso the name of the robot in the Automator icon on your Mac.
- gertlex 10y agoAlso the name of a warehouse robot made by Clearpath Robotics.[1] [1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/clearpath-otto-can-autonomously-haul-a-ton-of-stuff http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robot...
- simonsarris 10y agoI was thinking of the Otto Cycle, which occurs in most internal combustion engines (except the Prius and some Mazdas, which use the Atkinson cycle). I suspect that's where they get the name but they don't seem to have an About page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_cycle
- mintplant 10y agoI figured it was a play on "auto" -- as in, automotive.
- philippnagel 10y agoAnother collision: http://www.ottogroup.com/en/ http://www.ottogroup.com/en/ (although probably not that well known in the english speaking world).
- lispm 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_GmbH https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_GmbH
- xorgar831 10y agoThat was quick. Otto is a few months old?
- nullcipher 10y agoIt's a great Acquihire. Uber immediately gets all this self-driving expertise.
- linkregister 10y agoUber already has plenty with its ATC in Pittsburgh (the core engineers were hired from CMU's robotics lab). I'm guessing Otto has expertise specific to the trucking domain. At supposedly $680M, it seems like a high price.
- sf_rob 10y agoIt's former Google self-driving car engineers so they have a lot more than a few months of knowledge about the domain.
- huac 10y agoThe Bloomberg article claims that they left Google to bring their product to market more quickly.
- linkregister 10y agoOh right. Thanks for that.
- c-slice 10y agoIs this a plan for uber to enter the trucking logistics market?
- HammadB 10y agoYup
- seibelj 10y agoIs it really possible to have an "observer" of a self driving vehicle step in to save it in the event of an emergency? If you trust the vehicle for thousands of hours, and it never has a problem, you would of course start sleeping, reading, watching movies, etc. while it drives. The act of driving keeps you engaged, watching a car drive itself would be beyond boring.
- jdoliner 10y agoAnd even if the driver is totally alert. It's unclear to me why a human would be able to handle the situation that the machine couldn't. The only way I could see this making sense is if there were just certain conditions the car couldn't self drive in such as if it was too rainy.
- josho 10y agoIt is a data flywheel. There are scenarios that the autopilot can't handle yet. So, having a human behind the wheel enables the transition between where we are now (computers driving 95% of the time) to where we need to get (computers driving 100%). http://blog.algorithmia.com/machine-learning-trends-future-artificial-intelligence-2016/ http://blog.algorithmia.com/machine-learning-trends-future-a...
- linkregister 10y agoIn the Otto model, no. The driver would be asleep or otherwise not at the controls. Operators for long-haul trucking are essential. Performing maintenance, safety checks, and loading/unloading assistance will have to be done by humans in the near future. I would not be surprised if this was something that was not automated away in my lifetime.
- 15155 10y agoBut these things can be cheaply localized into hubs and turned into shift work, can't they?
- 10y ago
- jzig 10y agoSimpsons did it.
- jdoliner 10y agoI'd love the hear their justification for why this is going to lead to truckers getting paid more...
- echelon 10y agoIt's going to put them all out of work, eventually. Similar to training your replacement.
- epa 10y agoIm not so sure of that. The hardest part of trucking is the first 1% of the trip and the last 1% of the trip. I envision that the robotic trucks will leave and enter into designated facilities at the outskirts of town, from there a trucker can take the truck to the client to unload and sign the paper work, bring it back and set it on its new course. I think it will allow truckers a more specialized role of client service and trickier city driving, and to work in one city every day, instead of travelling.
- wp1 10y agoThis is how harbors work. Ports employee pilots, who board ships, get them through busy waterways, and dock them. The regular crew on a large ship just sits back when coming into port.
- nradov 10y agoThe regular crew doesn't sit back at all. They are busier than ever, it's just that they take orders from the pilot instead of a regular ship's officer for a few hours.
- bfuller 10y agoThose port pilot jobs are notoriously well paying as well as difficult to secure. Sure there will be more hubs than there are ports, but it doesn't look good for truckers. Not saying you were arguing any different op, just furthering the points made above and below.
- saynsedit 10y agoNews release from the future: After 2 years the original Otto product failed to get a footing in the market. Simultaneously, all attempts to integrate Otto technology into the core uber product failed due to internal politics and the fundamental impedance mismatch between self-driving AI for trucks and urban transportation. Additionally all original core Otto staff have left, and some are pursuing a new company that will revolutionize the future of truck driving.
- thebiglebrewski 10y agoI'm putting a reminder in my calendar 2 years from now to check in on this!
- guelo 10y agoCommercial long-haul freight belongs on railroads for both environmental and economic reasons because it is so much more efficient. It doesn't make sense that in our glorious free market freight on highways is taxpayer subsidized while freight on rail is mostly private.
- blocktuw 10y agoI agree with you that long-haul freight is best served by rail. However, I would hardly call the railroads unsubsidized. They received free land, cheap loans and government guaranteed business to develop the rail system. The eventual beneficiary of cheap transportation is the consumer. I suppose this should considered a regressive tax.
- dnautics 10y ago>They received free land, cheap loans and government guaranteed business to develop the rail system. Amazingly, this is not categorically true: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S....
- jdoliner 10y agoI think this is true in a world without self driving cars but I'm not so sure about a world with them. The key thing that roads give you over railways is flexibility. Roads require comparatively less planning and allow goods to be shipped point to point without having to change vehicles. Until now they've come with the huge costs of requiring a person to sit at the wheel and a lot of liability because that person might crash the truck and kill someone. If both of those costs go away I think roads might be better infrastructure than railroads.
- donw 10y agoOddly, this has been on my mind as well. On the one hand, rail is much cheaper per-mile than traditional roads, for both construction and maintenance. Rail is also more efficient in terms of goods hauled per unit of fuel spent, and controlling carbon emissions from rail is massively easier than doing so from individual trucks. However, rail itself is fundamentally... unegalitarian, maybe? Rail lines can only be used by those with the capital to run rolling stock between well-specified endpoints (typically large urban centers), and on specified timetables. The system as it exists in the US right now is less efficient, but opens up a lot of possibilities. For example, I live in Japan and don't own a car right now, which means that I basically can't go backpacking. But if I rent a car, then I can go out to more remote places that are less frequented by the non-hiking masses, and actually enjoy some of the sheer beauty of the Japanese countryside. Self-driving cars and trucks really do seem to bridge the gap between "cheap rail transport" and "private vehicles for everything", but I worry that they will continue just to be a convenience for the well-off (which is what Uber and Lyft currently are, frankly), rather than a means by which to make transportation available to everybody.
- kristianc 10y agoWhat's the story behind Otto? There are exactly two blog posts on the Otto blog- Otto launches and Otto sells to Uber. The line 'When we started Otto we committed to rethinking transportation' - what, three months ago? I hadn't heard of these guys before, but a business designed to be quick flipped? Was this business ever not part of Uber? What kind of three month old startup has a team that size? There doesn't seem to actually be even an MVP product there. How do businesses like this end up getting built and sold so quickly?
- subdane 10y agoFounded by four ex-Google engineers, including the guy that built Google's first self driving car https://backchannel.com/the-man-who-built-googles-first-self-driving-car-is-now-a-trucker-aa1726d3a36f https://backchannel.com/the-man-who-built-googles-first-self...
- joeblau 10y agoI don't know if this might be more help: https://newsroom.uber.com/rethinking-transportation/ https://newsroom.uber.com/rethinking-transportation/
- Fricken 10y agoThis is from the big Bloomberg article/interview that came out today: 'Kalanick began courting Levandowski this spring, broaching the possibility of an acquisition during a series of 10-mile night walks from the Soma neighborhood where Uber is also headquartered to the Golden Gate Bridge. The two men would leave their offices separately—to avoid being seen by employees, the press, or competitors. They’d grab takeout food, then rendezvous near the city’s Ferry Building. Levandowski says he saw a union as a way to bring the company’s trucks to market faster.' Which implies to me that the plan was for Uber to acquire Otto all along. "Okay, Travis, but I don't want to just get hired on as another employee, I want to be cool like Kyle Vogt. Give me a few months to buy some trucks, rig them up with sensors, put splashy logos on them and get some press, and then you can acquire me using some of those Saudi gigabucks you picked up in your series F."
- 10y ago
- Cozumel 10y agoSo..How will drivers get paid more when they don't have a job?! I'm all for this kind of technology but they need to at least be honest about what they're working towards.
- rubidium 10y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but there's some big mis-information by Otto. They quote: " It’s no surprise that trucking companies see over 90% of their drivers quit every year in search of better opportunities. " That was in 2014, and it was due to (from the link they provide) “larger fleets raising pay, offering bonuses and attracting more and more drivers from smaller fleets to fill seats.” They were still truckers, just different companies. The Otto piece made it sound like they were leaving trucking all together. The whole tone of the article of "making lives better for truckers" just falls flat. Not sure why they're trying to suger-coat it.
- themartorana 10y agoIt seems a dichotomous goal - make truckers' lives better while building tech to put truckers out of work.
- GauntletWizard 10y agoIf Otto takes the 11-hour highway stints out of trucker's days, and instead they work shift-work in major hubs, it is entirely possible that they will do both. The winners will get predictable, stable hours, the losers out of a job.
- biggc 10y ago> predictable, stable hours Probably with gradually reduced overall pay, because there will be a fraction of the jobs with the same number of potential truckers. I'm sure investors will see a solid return though.
- thdespou 10y agoIf I were a trucker I would look for a career change...
- wavefunction 10y agoWouldn't people who can put up with and perhaps even enjoy the truck-driving lifestyle be the people who are currently the primary demographic of truckers? I love how SV thinks everyone wants and needs their "help."
- Robotard 10y agoFuck. Such a shame that Uber didn't snatch up Waze before Goog. So much extra info gained for so many uses
- cpr 10y agoThe first few flaming wrecks with self-driving trucks involving particularly ugly (complete crushing, burn-out, etc.) passenger car deaths are going to trigger a massive backlash. I don't think at that point that any arguments about how the overall accident rates are being cut, etc., will hold much water for most people.
- pauljaworski 10y agoI interviewed last year for a company called Walkboard Technologies[1] that billed themselves as "Uber for truck drivers." Their goal was the "new way to connect drivers and shippers" part of Otto's business model. Looks like they got beat to the punch big time here. 1. http://www.walkboard.com/ http://www.walkboard.com/
- thrownblown 10y agoLogistics and transport, human or material, isn't a good job. It is a good paying job. One of the last good paying jobs you could obtain without any higher education. Nobody really wants to do these jobs, except maybe a bike messenger, and that only last so long.
- 6stringmerc 10y agoWait, so this link isn't to a parable about a former school bus driver who "loves to get blotto" becoming an Uber driver? Um, well, uh, good for Otto, but I must admit I'm a wee bit disappointed for purely selfish reasons.
- conradfr 10y agoOK but do they use MySql or PostgreSql ?
- whalesalad 10y agoI'm surprised this started as autonomous trucking. It's a HUGE industry with a massive and unionized workforce that isn't going to go quietly. I wonder why the Uber approach of starting with human drivers wasn't chosen. There are lots of trucks out there with dedicated career drivers who make a life out of it. They often return home without a trailer or load and having an uber-for-cargo would be a great way to take advantage of those empty legs (this term is from the airplane industry but I think it applies here) Going from zero to self-driving seems a little advantageous.
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