Uber customers can take rides in self-driving cars from this month

Customers of taxi service Uber can order a taxi ride in a self-driving car from the end of this month in the American city of Pittsburgh. The car does have a driver, a technician who has to keep an eye on whether everything is going well.

It will initially concern a number of cars, but by the end of this year, 100 should already be on the road in the American city, Uber told Bloomberg news agency. The cars are a modified version of the Volvo XC90, equipped with cameras, lasers, GPS receivers and sensors to enable self-driving. Uber claims to be the first to offer taxi rides in self-driving cars.

It’s no coincidence that it’s the first time in Pittsburgh. That’s where Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center is, where the taxi service has previously experimented with modified Ford Fusions as self-driving cars. It is unlikely that Uber will soon deploy the self-driving cars in the more than five hundred cities where the service operates. For Pittsburgh, the taxi company first made detailed maps showing all objects on the street to make autonomous driving possible.