As the first city in the Texas to get service in 2012, Dallas has always been an important market for Uber. And with the recent the announcement of a new Uber office, the company’s footprint in the city is only growing.
The company may be familiar with Dallas streets, but soon so will the cars themselves.
On Tuesday, Uber announced that the city will become a testing ground for its fleet of self-driving vehicles, joining Pittsburg, San Francisco and Toronto. Beginning in November, Uber Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), the arm of the company developing the self-driving technology, will begin collecting data and highly-detailed maps of the streets in preparation for beta testing.
“The city’s modern infrastructure, unique traffic patterns, road characteristics, and climate will offer new information that can inform our ongoing engineering efforts,” wrote Austin Geidt, head of Uber ATG Strategy in a blog post on Medium.com. “Self-driving technology has the potential to create even more value to our users. In order to arrive at that future, we must approach building this technology thoughtfully and with a strong sense of responsibility to the communities where we operate.”
The company plans to begin the project with trained vehicle operators behind the wheel. As they drive, they will be collecting geographic information, as well as capturing everyday scenarios on the road. The company will use the data to further develop and refine the technology for self-driving cars.
The company experienced a setback in the development of the technology, when a self-driving vehicle struck 49-year old Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Az. last year.
While the initial phase is expected to begin in November, rollout of the self-driving vehicles in Dallas could still be a little way off.
“The data we collect will inform our next steps — we may not look to test our self-driving system in Dallas immediately following this first round of data gathering,” Geidt wrote. “While we are certainly excited by this possibility, we are also committed to ensuring that every mile we drive on public roads contributes meaningfully to our development work.”
Last month, it was announced that Uber would be opening a large office in the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas. In exchange for a $24 million incentive package, the company plans on bringing about 3,000 jobs to the city.
