The lawsuit by Waymo against Uber has been a hot topic for quite a while. The two silicon valley giants are standing against each other fighting over the technology that could change ground transportation as we know it now. Waymo sued Uber claiming that Anthony Levandowski, previously working on Waymo’s (then Google) self driving car project downloaded over 14,000 confidential documents before abruptly leaving company to start Otto which was soon acquired by Uber to use the stolen technology. Lot of questions were also raised on the fact that such a young company came with a price tag of close to USD 700 million.

But a lot more has been going on in the background that came to light following the lawsuit. Anthony Levandowski is a key player in this ongoing battle between the giants and more questions are being raised as Uber tries to move the case to arbitration rather than going to trial. TechCrunch has shared a detailed timeline of the events and Levandowski formed Otto (then 280 Systems) on January 15, 2016, before quitting Google on January 27, 2016 which Google claims was an abrupt departure without giving any notice after working for close to a decade.

For a while, Otto was operating behind closed doors. It came out of stealth in May and announced its arrival through a Medium post dated May 17, 2016. However, a month prior to that, Levandowski (and Otto) joined hands with Travis Kalanick (and Uber) and signed a joint defence and confidentiality agreement. Why would he go out and help a potential competitor? Nobody knows. In August, Uber announced that it will be acquiring Otto and brought Levandowski onboard.

Another relevant piece of the puzzle came out last month with a Reuters story which added a new player into the equation. In May 2016, Otto acquired Tyto LiDAR, company building the piece of tech (and holding patents for) around which this lawsuit hinges. This happened only a day after Otto publically announced its launch. It appeared that it will be central to Uber’s defence of maybe wrap the situation with a much smaller damage.

However, Waymo also alleged that Levandowski was a stakeholder in Tyto since its inception in 2012, long before he parted ways with Google, and helped Google investigate whether it should purchase Tyto without disclosing a relationship with the company in 2015. Waymo’s arbitration filing alleges that he was involved in competing side businesses during his tenure at Google. It mentions Odin Wave and Tyto as two separate companies which later merged however, Jalopnik found out that they are indeed the same company and there is record of Tyto changing name at some point indicating the same. While Levandowski denied associations with the company, documents from the City of Berkley, California indicate that Odin Wave was a tenant at property owned by Levandowski. Google was informed by a supplier of part order similar to Google’s own part in July 2013 and the company in question was Odin Wave.

Another interesting link here is Ognen Stojanvoski, the person listed as manager of Tyto in Secretary of State filing. Stojanovski and Levandowski go back to at least 2005 when the two were on same team for the famous DARPA Grand Challenge. The patent mentioned earlier was transferred to a company called Pouch Holdings in 2014 which also listed Stojanovski as manager. This was the year before Google considered purchasing Tyto and put Levandowski on the job to probe into the matter in 2015. It might not be wrong to assume that Levandowski was very well aware of the developments inside Google being on the same team. In 2016, Pouch Holdings merged with Tyto Lidar in April 2016 and transferred the patent to Tyto as reported by Jalopnik. And of course post this, Tyto was acquired by Otto which came to public eyes only recently.

Waymo also alleges that Levandowski, with Waymo colleague Lion Ron, started making attempts to get other employees to join their upcoming venture. Waymo has also submitted declarations, from people aware of the matter, linking Levandowski to Uber back in 2015.

Uber is expected to file its first major response to Waymo’s claims today. It is hard to tell what twist this tale will take but for now, the future of Uber seems to be hinged around stolen technology.

Update: Uber has responded in the lawsuit with Waymo and has shared that it began developing its LIDAR technology almost a year before Levandowski was hired at Uber. It also shared that the LIDAR sensors being used by the company are purchased off the shelf from Velodyne and don’t copy the Waymo design.

The post The back story of Waymo-Uber lawsuit is twisted to say the least appeared first on TravHQ.

Uber will be testing its self-driving cabs in real world starting this month in Pittsburgh by assigning the semi-autonomous vehicles to Uber users randomly. The fleet will consist of modified Volvo XC90 SUVs. Each car will be supervised by a human in the driver’s seat ready to take control when required and a co-drive taking notes. Uber hasn’t revealed how many of these cars will be running around.

Volvo Cars and Uber join forces to develop autonomous driving cars

Uber is joining forces with the right teams to maximise the outcome of its efforts towards a driverless future. The company announced yesterday that it will be working with Volvo to develop autonomous vehicles. The two companies will be investing a combined of USD 300 million towards this project. The primary objective of the push towards a driverless future is to make roads safer. Volvo has always been known to make some of the safest vehicles on the road today with the help of various active and passive safety features. The base vehicles will be manufactured by Volvo Cars and then purchased for use by Uber. Uber will add its own self-developed autonomous driving systems to the vehicle and Volvo will use the same base vehicle for its own autonomous car strategy. It is a win-win situation for both the companies. Uber will need decades to come anywhere close to what Volvo is capable of right now when it comes to making cars. On the other side, Uber is very strong when it comes to technology and has the right kind of talent to help Volvo eliminate the role of driver. Uber also has the intelligence that comes from its fleet doing combined 1.2 billion miles per month.

Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, said: “Over one million people die in car accidents every year. These are tragedies that self-driving technology can help solve, but we can’t do this alone. That’s why our partnership with a great manufacturer like Volvo is so important. Volvo is a leader in vehicle development and best-in-class when it comes to safety. By combining the capabilities of Uber and Volvo we will get to the future faster, together.”

Along with this, Uber also announced the acquisition of Otto, a startup that has been working on technologies to make trucks autonomous. With this acquisition, Anthony Levandowski, co-founder of Otto will lead their combined self-driving efforts across personal transport, delivery and long distance trucking in San Francisco, Palo Alto and Pittsburgh.

Lyft has also been quick to make moves in this space with GM. While everyone is talking about the possibilities for brands like Uber with autonomous vehicles, they could also pose a threat to the entire business of Uber. He even highlighted this in a recent interview with Business Insider. Autonomy will increase vehicle productivity and it won’t be long before we see many new businesses being built around it. Right now Uber has got its fleet of drivers and the advanced systems that work behind the scenes to get you a ride but if any brand is able to achieve affordable automation before Uber, Uber will have a major threat to deal with.

Kalanick highlighted the same in his interview and quoted, “If we are not tied for first, then the person who is in first, or the enemy that’s in first, then rolls out a ride-sharing network that is far cheaper or far higher quality than Uber’s, then Uber is no longer a thing.”

Is the aggressive push by Uber towards a driverless future justified? We think so. From how things appear right now, it is a situation where the winner takes all and nobody has the timelines. The future of ground transportation is certainly very interesting.

The post Uber bullish on driverless cars, acquires Otto and associates with Volvo to speed up developments appeared first on TravHQ.

The automobile industry has largely been driven by the legacy players and it was hard to imagine the words “automobile” and “startup” used together until a while back. Now however, things are changing as new trends emerge and automobile industry shifts towards mobility industry. Many tech startups are driving the new trends that we see including autonomy in cars. If you are interested in a driverless future, here are some startups you should keep a track on.

(Image: Nissan by cwkarl/CC BY-ND 2.0)

1- NuTonomy

NuTonomy was founded by MIT PhD graduates Karl Lagnemma and Emilio Frazzoli in 2013. While some startups and corporations are focusing on building technologies for future cars, they are working on retrofitting existing vehicles to make them driverless. The company is testing a fleet of self driving taxis which they expect to deploy in Singapore by 2018. NuTonomy cars are also being tested in other parts of the world with JLR.

Website

2- Nauto

Palo Alto based Nauto was founded by Stefan Heck and Fredrick Soo in 2015. Instead of relying on LiDar sensors being currently used by the likes of Google and others, Nauto uses pro-sumer cameras along with already existing tech like motion sensors, GPS and few other sensors. Merging dashcam info with AI, the system detects what is happening in front and helps the driver avoid dangerous situations. This isn’t exactly driverless at this point but by increasing the level of autonomy, it will accelerate the shift.

Website

3- Drive.ai

Silicon valley startup that has been working quietly under the wraps for quite a while got permissions to test on public roads in California earlier this year. Founded by Sameep Tandon and Carol Reiley, the startup is working on applying deep learning techniques to driverless cars. The company claims that the system will be better for extreme conditions when driving situations are far from ideal.

Website

4- Cruise automation

This Silicon Valley startup was in news recently for being acquired by General Motors. The startup launched in 2013 with semi-automatic conversion systems for vehicles and has developed algorithms that allow the vehicle to be more aware of road and surroundings. The startup has full fledged driverless systems and the association with GM will allow it to reach the goals quickly.

Website

5- Oxbotica

Oxbotica is a spin out company from the University of Oxford. The system developed by them, called Selenium can pull data from various systems and then use a series of algorithms to determine the position, surrounding conditions and possible route. The software learns as the vehicle is driven around and then can offer autonomy. They plan to develop software for not just autonomous cars but warehouse robots, forklifts and public transport vehicles.

Website

6- Comma ai

George Hotz took up the job of bringing self driving technology to masses at very low prices and started Comma.ai. Hotz termed Mobileye “behind the times” as he believed the same can be achieved at lower costs and promised aftermarket self driving kits for less than USD 1000. The company recently released data of its car driving on public roads and to keep development costs down, they are inviting people to share their driving data through a dashcam app.

Website

7- Otto

Launched by a group of former senior Google employees, including one from Google’s autonomous car project, Otto aims to make trucks driverless. This will make trucks more efficient as they can be used for longer part of their life and just like the promise driverless cars bring, driverless trucks will make roads safer.

Website

Also read: 9 industries that will be affected by the arrival of driverless cars

The post Interested in a driverless future? 7 startups that you should be watching appeared first on TravHQ.