Uber launches London robotaxis ahead of Waymo, using Wayve tech

Uber has beaten Waymo to the launch of a commercial robotaxi service in London, the city's first. The vehicles run on autonomous driving technology built by Wayve, a UK-based startup, and will carry safety drivers behind the wheel in the initial phase.

Uber customers in London can register their interest in the app's settings. When booking through UberX, Uber Comfort or Uber Electric, riders may be matched with a Wayve autonomous vehicle, though there is no guarantee. The fleet starts with Ford Mustang Mach-Es, with the Nissan Leaf to follow.

Safety drivers monitor the trip from the front seat. Uber says they do not control the driving and will be phased out gradually as the service moves to fully driverless operation. They are licensed by Transport for London.

No lidar, no geofence

Uber says there is no geofence, the virtual boundary robotaxis are usually programmed to stay inside, because Wayve's AV2.0 system is designed to move beyond the constraints of traditional AV systems. Wayve describes the older AV1.0 approach as relying on hand-engineered stacks, HD maps and rules, and says its own path is a single learned AI driver trained to understand the world, anticipate risk and adapt to new environments.

Perception is handled by cameras and radar. Notably, there is no lidar, the laser sensor Waymo and many other operators depend on, placing Wayve in the same camp as Tesla. The company says its software stack is hardware agnostic and can run on whatever sensors and chips a carmaker uses, with lidar integrated if a manufacturer prefers it.

Uber will handle maintenance and servicing with UK fleet operator Otto Car, while Wayve keeps control of the driving system. Founded in 2017 by two machine learning PhD students from the University of Cambridge, Wayve raised $1.2 billion this year from Uber, Nvidia, Stellantis, Nissan and Mercedes-Benz, according to TechCrunch. It also works with Stellantis on hands-free driving.

Waymo says it will launch in London before the end of the year, and Lyft is building a service with China's Baidu starting in Brent. Uber says it plans to spend upwards of $10 billion on its robotaxi business over time. Full report at The Verge.