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U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement
- sschueller 8y agoWill Uber aquire the necessary licenses from the FAA to fly these things or will they also ignore those because they want to 'disrupt' the industry? Theses things better be safe before they get used. I for one don't want one if these things crashing on my house.
- sgillen 8y agoThey sort of have to right? If they don’t its going to be obvious and the government should come down on them. I guess the world isn’t perfect but we at least have regulation for things we put in the air that we won’t for self driving cars or ride sharing etc.
- john_moscow 8y ago>Uber and the Army's research lab expect to spend a combined total of $1 million in funding for this research; this funding will be divided equally between each party. That's about 8 person-years in salary. Given Uber's scale that doesn't make any sense.
- John_KZ 8y agoCould it be a front for some other kind of deal? It sounds a bit paranoid but if it's classified they wouldn't tell us anyway.
- criticalpotato 8y agoMost probably from government side this is purely a bold "In case these guys manage to do it we don't want the tech to fall to hands of <insert random country> so let's get contract on their R&D now and keep eye on it. If they succeed we'll push for exclusivity and if they fail, well it's a million, who cares. We're already some 20 trillion in debt so pish posh."
- weaksauce 8y agoIt was a 500k match not 1 million.
- 1369ic 8y agoI work one level up from the lab, but they probably wouldn't tell me either because I don't have a need to know. That said, if there are classified angles to something I at least usually know what to avoid bringing up. Nothing like that with this partnership. Our command has more than 500 formal partnerships, and this deals with one of the Army's top modernization priorities (future vertical lift).
- sgillen 8y agoProbably just a way to grease the wheels and start the sharing of knowledge between parties. If Uber succeeds in becoming a serious aeronotics lab then the government will definetly want to collaborate, might make sense to get some ties established now?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- walshemj 8y agolot less than that actually that's a small 3-4 person team
- jadedhacker 8y agoInteresting, military only gave ~$1M for such an ambitious project while Uber is burning billions a year and could easily afford this. My speculation is that this partnership is first and foremost an attempt to provide Uber with a patina of respectability for this attempt and access to military technical expertise. Uber just crashed and burned on self driving, something it desperately needs to quench its towering money fires. Uber's investors know that. Therefore, Uber needs to constantly appear to be "innovating" in flashy ways to keep its investors at bay with seductive promises of even greater riches. This, even if the entire idea of flying cars driven by normal humans is insane or worse, piloted by a company known for breaking rules (now in Aviation of all things!) and have the dubious honor of being the first to kill a woman with self-driving AI. It helps to have connections to get these contracts yo. And of course, yet another major American company cooperating with defense. Military-industrial complex indeed. Every peaceful venture must be tied to the killing machine. All the cool kids are, like Google and its TF support for drone assassinations. EDIT: added technical expertise to 2nd paragraph
- walshemj 8y agoWell maybe its a cheap way of getting access to the research larger drones for resupply in the field
- kvartz 8y agoAccording to Gizmodo report military is using Google's Tensor Flow units for footage processing, it would be fair to assume that it's simply a trial contract to see if they can process some of that footage. That could potentially mean government contracts for private companies going to the lowest bidder, some time in the near future.
- make3 8y agotensorflow is a machine learning API. you're thinking of TPUs
- ransom1538 8y ago"Interesting, military only gave ~$1M for such an ambitious project" I imagine this is just a test. They are blowing the cash with 99% certainty nothing will come out of it. BUT, if headway is made, it could quickly become hundreds of millions.
- discordance 8y ago"US Army hoping to learn from Uber's UAV killing machines"
- mtgx 8y agoIt's called the Uber CrowdControl™ technology. It could prove useful in enemy territory when surrounded by hostile forces.
- philipwhiuk 8y agoIf not, they activate Surge.
- txsh 8y agoIt’s good that the US isn’t at war in Iraq any more. Uber’s surge pricing would bankrupt them.
- shanghaiaway 8y agoGood reason for legislators to kick Uber out of their country.
- fiiv 8y agoI think this is definitely true. There are many countries in the world that are looking for an excuse to turn public opinion against Uber, and having the US Army as a partner is definitely a good way to do that.
- frockington 8y agoAnd then they can also scrap all of the planes, space programs, tor networks, telephones and just about every other modern technology that the US Military has in someway funded
- TP4Cornholio 8y agoNot to mention the internet and gps, both which have roots in the DOD.
- fiiv 8y agoThe way this tends to work is not rational, it's reactionary and often punitive. It doesn't matter if product X also was partially funded by US Army, if regulators don't like Uber, this is yet another thing to create that argument with.
- Tepix 8y agoUber misses no opportunity not to like them.
- FriedPickles 8y agoIf both rotors spin the same direction, what keeps the aircraft body from rotating the other direction? Is there a tail rotor?
- criticalpotato 8y agoGood questions, even better question would be how did we figure out quantum theory etc but couldn't figure that twice the vertical lift from 2 rotors is more than lift single rotor? How's this something credited to Uber? Dunno.
- rando444 8y agoTandem rotors have been around for almost a century. What they're doing here is stacking rotors on top of each other, not for lift, but apparently because it's quieter and allows for 'better performance' .. whatever that means.
- matt4077 8y agoOne would think Uber has enough problems recruiting and retaining talented people, what with "go fast and break things (people)". Now it's not just casual misogyny and user surveillance. Your work may actually kill people when used as intended.
- golergka 8y ago> Your work may actually kill people when used as intended. Are you intentionally being completely oblivious to the fact that many people believe this consequence to be a good thing for them and humanity as a whole? I don't want to get into the debate about whether this belief is true or not; I'm just curious as to why HN commenters so often pretend that people with different political beliefs don't exist at all, or are only pretending to have these beliefs out of some other, hidden, true reasons. Even if you don't agree with some political stance, it's just strange to convince yourself that nobody sincerely believes it.
- aninhumer 8y agoI don't think that's a fair criticism here. The parent didn't say "Don't you know this will kill people!?" they said "This will kill people".
- golergka 8y agoIt also implied that this fact carries a certain value judgement, ignoring the reality that said value judgement may just as well be completely the opposite.
- frockington 8y agoAnd what if the workers want to help kill terrorist/enemy combatants? I'm sure there is a significant portion of the population that would find this as a positive
- JepZ 8y agoTwo guesses: - Uber has ambitions to build a Volocopter [1] alternative - Uber wants to become an US Army contractor (probably to utilize their AI technology for drones or self driving supply trucks/tanks) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tODIvUmH6cs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tODIvUmH6cs
- gaius 8y agoI wonder if any Uber staff will resign in protest. I wonder if customers and drivers in countries not entire aligned with US imperialism will vote with their feet too.
- carboy0808 8y agoUS imperialism? Go away troll.
- jadedhacker 8y agoAfghanistan. Iraq. Central America. Indonesia. Korea. Vietnam. We can do this for a while and that's just the overt military interventions not counting colonization by American business and capitalist ideology.
- pjc50 8y agoGuessing this refers to http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8640985.html http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8640985.html : multiple co-axial rotors spinning in the same direction sounds a bit odd but evidently does something clever with wakes to increase lift / reduce noise.
- zeusk 8y agoWell, jet engines are internally co-axial rotors spinning in the same direction (except for some with contra rotating HP and LP).
- votingprawn 8y agoThat comparison only really holds if you ignore the stators, which the rotors are reacting against.
- stephenr 8y agoSo the army saw how Uber’s driverless cars handle pedestrians crossing a road and said “shut up and take my money”?
- rdtsc 8y agoThey probably didn't even think or care about it. I bet someone on the board reached for some connections and it just happened to be the military. A lot of that stuff happens behind the scenes even though officially the is a bid and proposal process.
- Bobbleoxs 8y agoIsn't it ironic whilst Google's engineers are mass protesting against military contracts, Uber already signed a whole bunch without any moral dilemma whatsover. Tells a lot about the company ethics there. On a separate note, could someone enlighten how stacked co-rotoring (moving towards the same direction) may make the aircraft silent and not noisier?
- ryanlol 8y agoHas Google not signed a whole bunch of military contracts?
- em3rgent0rdr 8y ago> "Google's engineers are mass protesting" ~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees. A drop in the bucket. Clearly the vast majority of google employees don't care, rationalize away, or excuse the fact that they work for the military industrial complex.
- epanchin 8y ago5.6% of staff signed a petition and 1.6% resigned. In comparison, the largest petition in the US was 4.6 million signatures, a mere 1.8% of the working age population.
- tossaway1 8y ago0.016%, not 1.6%
- doktrin 8y ago>> ~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees. > 5.6% of staff signed a petition and 1.6% resigned. 1.6% would be almost 12,000, not 12. I'm not familiar with this case but a quick search corroborated that it was a dozen employees that walked out.
- 8y ago
- criticalpotato 8y agoOr would it be time to give up on Uber and finally admit that they're neither a technology company nor anything else "groundbreaking" that Valley thinks they are. "Technology" for the company has been coming up with a mobile app to connect drivers and potential customers - something hardly groundbreaking. Probably the most groundbreaking technological thing coming from these guys has been the multiple evasion software etc which at the end of the day are not only just sketchy to begin with but also not really anything worth their company valuation, even on the defense contracting etc where such applications could become worth something if you have slick enough lobbying/sales people. And while their efforts to "disrupt" the taxi economy have been "great" in all honesty they've only created room for their competition to benefit on this - Uber has simply managed to take a business (taxis) and run it to chaos while what would've been the logical step was to run a similar application by the taxi companies for ride hailing. The US defense collaboration we can only speculate on but presumably this is either government wanting to get their hands on the Uber spying software or taking their bet that if these dimwits ever come up with anything technological they can always call for it - why spend billions upon billions on R&D when you can get a bunch of small contracts for which you can negotiate exclusive rights for upcoming R&D by the companies. My question simply is - why do you care of anything Uber anymore? After everything this company has proven to be from the law enforcement evasion to sexual harassment scandals and borderline impossible "innovations" (like seriously, who seriously thought these guys can figure out the self-driving cars etc when the 2 of the biggest technology corporations with virtually unlimited experience, know-how, funding and partnerships haven't done so yet?). At best this would be proper honest R&D but in my honest opinion there's no way Uber is that far with the tech and no way US Army is doing R&D for civil purposes, you take into account the miniscule contract value etc and it's rather clear that this is either publicity stunt by Uber to save their sinking ship or direct tech takeover from government. In either case there's hardly anything news worthy and even less anything worth of spending time - let is sink and someone will build a better, functioning ship to take people across the busy streets of New York in some vehicle whether it's flying or on the ground.
- phonebucket 8y ago'"Technology" for the company has been coming up with a mobile app to connect drivers and potential customers - something hardly groundbreaking.' While I don't care much for the company, Uber's efforts in AI research has impressed me. Have a look: http://uber.ai/ http://uber.ai/
- omginternets 8y ago>To date, stacked co-rotating rotors have not been deployed in existing flying craft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamov_Ka-50 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamov_Ka-50 What am I missing?
- ynniv 8y agoExisting systems are contra-rotating, this research is co-rotating.
- RunningRabbit 8y agoIt's about time i can order a black M1 Abrams to get me to the club in style!
- trumped 8y agoAre they going to equip all Uber cars with a standard charge of explosive in case one of their customer need to disapear?
- willart4food 8y agoI can see Uber doing R&D in autonomous cars, I see that an extension - and the next logical steps - for transportation as we know it. But, when I read: "The joint work statement focuses on research to create the first usable stacked co-rotating rotors or propellers; this is a concept for having two rotor systems placed on top of each other and rotating in the same direction." I scratch my head: where is Uber's domain expertise in this?
- monocasa 8y agoIsn't Uber's most recent soft pivot in their pitch to their investors "cars on the road are overrated, the future's all about flying taxis"? I just hope this isn't DARPA subsidising Uber's questionable at best business model.
- inverse_pi 8y agoIf you have money, you have domain expertise. They hired Mark Moore from NASA and Celina Mikolajczak from Tesla. Each of these people can hire an entire team of experts from NASA and Tesla.
- jonknee 8y agoIt's a $500,000 dollar research grant, I assume the military gives out a lot of these and almost none make press releases. Uber has talked about flying cars before, so that's the experience answer.
- calcifer 8y ago
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoI find it interesting that Uber wants to do everything except find people rides. I’ll continue using Lyft. Uber is going to either get lucky with something and also be the Uber Of That or they’re going to burn hard by forgetting what it is they are supposed to be doing.
- dkdinesh749 8y agoWow....salute to this
- wishart_washy 8y agoAnd when the agreement completes they'll each gain +200 science.
- dmix 8y agoYou can see a picture of the "stacked co-rotating rotors" on their partners website: http://www.launchpnt.com/ http://www.launchpnt.com/