text: Loving your local Uber driver? That scrappy entrepreneur who’s turned his car into a home office? Well you can kiss him goodbye: The robo-cabs are coming! 
   
   Uber prides itself on being disruptive to the taxi industry by providing personal transport service without all those pesky regulations. Now it’s disrupting itself: On Monday, the company announced a partnership with Carnegie Mellon University to build a robotics research lab in Pittsburgh. TechCrunch reports that the goal is to create a fleet of driverless, robot cabs. It’s further proof that Uber cares so much about its drivers. 
   
   As it turns out, the move may be a response to a warning from a Google exec who sits on Uber’s board: Google is creating its own ride-hailing app, and the cabs could be self-driving. 
   
   Until now, Google has been Uber’s tech-industry BFF, investing $258 million in the ride-hailing app, sharing Google Maps, and lending a C-suiter to Uber’s board of directors. Now it seems those buddy-buddy days are over. 
   
   If Google really does come out with a competitor app, it could autonomously drive Uber into oblivion. Finding new sources of capital shouldn’t be too difficult in Silicon Valley, but there’s no good substitute for Google Maps — MapQuest and Apple Maps are crap. And playing catch-up on self-driving vehicle tech won’t be easy for Uber, either; Google’s driverless cars have already logged over 700,000 accident-free miles on public roads. 
   
   The big G also has a head-start toward building a taxi app network, thanks to Uber drivers and riders, who have generated server farms full of data on urban transportation patterns through Google Maps. 
   
   Google may have simply gotten fed up that the unregulated cab service has been breaking the “don’t be evil” rule by pressuring drivers into sub-prime auto loans and showing little remorse for the disgusting actions of some slimeball drivers. 
   
   At least folks will finally stop calling these apps “ride-sharing” once empty Google-mobiles are patrolling the neighborhood. It’s tough to call it sharing if you’re the only person in the car. ||||| Posted by Craig 
   
   Uber and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) are announcing today a strategic partnership that includes the creation of the Uber Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh, near the CMU campus. The center will focus on the development of key long-term technologies that advance Uber’s mission of bringing safe, reliable transportation to everyone, everywhere. 
   
   “We are excited to join the community of Pittsburgh and partner with the experts at CMU, whose breadth and depth of technical expertise, particularly in robotics, are unmatched. As a global leader in urban transportation, we have the unique opportunity to invest in leading edge technologies to enable the safe and efficient movement of people and things at giant scale. This collaboration and the creation of the Uber Advanced Technologies Center represent an important investment in building for the long term of Uber.” 
   
   The partnership will provide a forum for Uber technology leaders to work closely with CMU faculty, staff, and students — both on campus and at the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) — to do research and development, primarily in the areas of mapping and vehicle safety and autonomy technology. 
   
   —Jeff Holden, Uber Chief Product Officer 
   
   The agreement will also include funding from Uber for faculty chairs and graduate fellowships, recognizing and supporting Carnegie Mellon’s world-renowned faculty and attracting the best and brightest graduate students. 
   
   “Uber is a rapidly growing company known for its innovative technology that is radically improving access to transportation for millions of global citizens. CMU is renowned for innovations that transform lives. We look forward to partnering with Uber as they build out the Advanced Technologies Center and to working together on real-world applications, which offer very interesting new challenges at the intersections of technology, mobility, and human interactions.” 
   
   —Andrew Moore, Dean of the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University 
   
   The Center will aid in local job creation and further the well-deserved reputation of the Steel City for its growing innovation sector. Uber and CMU will hold an event in Pittsburgh to formally kick off the partnership in the coming weeks. 
   
   “I am pleased to welcome Uber to the growing list of leading technology companies that are coming to Pittsburgh to help invent the future. This is yet another case where collaboration between the city and its universities is creating opportunities for job growth and community development.” 
   
   —Mayor William Peduto, City of Pittsburgh ||||| Driver-on-demand service Uber is building a robotics research lab in Pittsburgh, PA to “kickstart autonomous taxi fleet development,” sources close to the decision have confirmed to TechCrunch. They say the company has hired talent from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, including lead engineering and commercialization experts. 
   
   No one at Carnegie Mellon or Uber agreed to discuss the deal on the record but an announcement should be forthcoming. Update: Uber published a blog post today outlining its partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, confirming our reporting. 
   
   Sources tell us Uber is hiring more than fifty senior scientists from Carnegie Mellon as well as from the National Robotics Engineering Center, a CMU-affiliated research entity. Carnegie Mellon, home of the Mars Rover and other high-profile robotics projects, declined to comment at this time, as did scientists mentioned by our source. Uber has “cleaned out” the Robotics Institute, said the source. 
   
   The source also noted that most of these technologies came through a “massive” military spending push over the past decade and should net the university millions in IP licensing fees. 
   
   Uber will be developing the core technology, the vehicles, and associated infrastructure at this Pittsburgh facility, according to sources. They have already hired a number of employees and made moves to outfit them with software, including a multi-hundred-thousand dollar investment in third-party engineering workstations. 
   
   In the past, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has said he would replace human drivers with self-driving cars. The decision to run the facility in Pittsburgh makes perfect sense, given the proximity to CMU and the potential secrecy afforded by moving research out of Silicon Valley. 
   
   In a related story, Bloomberg Business is reporting that Google is looking into creating an on-demand car service of its own, which is very interesting considering Uber’s interest in automated vehicles. It also raises questions about Google’s David Drummond maintaining a spot on Uber’s board. Google has integrated Uber into its Google Maps products and has taken an investment in Uber via its Google Ventures arm. 
   
   No specific plans for a roll-out date or goals for Uber’s automated driving efforts were mentioned. The company recently raised $4 billion in equity and debt including $1.6 billion in convertible debt earlier this month. This follows a $1.4 billion Series D funding round over the summer as well as another $1.2 round in December. The company is now valued at $41 billion. 
   
   Updated to add reports of Google competing with Uber. ||||| SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email 
   
   Photographer: Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty Images Photographer: Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty Images 
   
   Uber faces an ever-growing cast of adversaries that includes dubious regulators, litigious drivers, hostile members of the press, and some well-funded rivals. But the most significant threat to the app-based transportation company may be much closer to home: one of its biggest investors, Google. 
   
   Google Ventures, the search giant's venture capital arm, invested $258 million in Uber in August 2013. It was Google Ventures' largest investment deal ever, and the company put more money into Uber's next funding round less than a year later. Back then, it was easy for observers to imagine Google teaming closely with Uber, or even one day acquiring it. David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer and senior vice president of corporate development, joined the Uber board of directors in 2013 and has served on it ever since. 
   
   Now there are signs that the companies are more likely to be ferocious competitors than allies. Google is preparing to offer its own ride-hailing service, most likely in conjunction with its long-in-development driverless car project. Drummond has informed Uber's board of this possibility, according to a person close to the Uber board, and Uber executives have seen screenshots of what appears to be a Google ride-sharing app that is currently being used by Google employees. This person, who requested not to be named because the talks are private, said the Uber board is now weighing whether to ask Drummond to resign his position as an Uber board member. 
   
   Uber is also teaming up with Carnegie Mellon University for a research facility in Pittsburgh, Pa., to develop its own autonomous vehicle technology, the company announced on Monday. (The news was reported earlier by TechCrunch.) 
   
   Google has made no secret of its ambitions to revolutionize transportation with autonomous vehicles. Chief Executive Officer Larry Page is said to be personally fascinated by the challenge of making cities operate more efficiently. The company recently said the driverless car technology in development within its Google X research lab is from two to five years from being ready for widespread use. At the Detroit auto show last month, Chris Urmson, the Google executive in charge of the project, articulated one possible scenario in which autonomous vehicles are patrolling neighborhoods to pick up and drop off passengers. “We're thinking a lot about how in the long-term, this might become useful in people's lives, and there are a lot of ways we can imagine this going,” Urmson said in a conference call with reporters on Jan. 14. “One is in the direction of the shared vehicle. The technology would be such that you can call up the vehicle and tell it where to go and then have it take you there.” 
   
   Those comments, according to the person familiar with deliberations of the Uber's board, have left executives at Uber deeply concerned—for good reason. Google is a deep-pocketed, technically sophisticated competitor, and Uber’s dependence on the search giant goes far beyond capital. Uber’s smartphone applications for drivers and riders are based on Google Maps, which gives Google a fire hose of data about transportation patterns within cities. Uber would be crippled if it lost access to the industry-leading mapping application, and alternatives— such as AOL's MapQuest, Apple Maps, and a host of regional players—are widely seen as inferior. 
   
   Google’s entrance into the ride-sharing market would also leave Uber without a partner in the suddenly plausible future in which cars without steering wheels roam the streets. Uber will either have to develop the technology itself or form an alliance with a company that can if it wants to offer autonomous vehicles within its fleet. Mercedes, Audi, Tesla, and other carmakers have said they are developing driverless cars, though it's not clear that any is as advanced as Google's. 
   
   An Uber spokesperson declined to offer a comment for this article. A Google spokesperson also declined to comment, although the company issued a cryptic tweet. 
   
   @business We think you'll find Uber and Lyft work quite well. We use them all the time. — Google (@google) February 2, 2015 
   
   Travis Kalanick, Uber’s CEO, has publicly discussed what he sees as the inevitability of autonomous taxis, saying they could offer cheaper rides and a true alternative to vehicle ownership. “The Uber experience is expensive because it’s not just the car but the other dude in the car,” he said at a technology conference in 2014, referring to the expense of paying human drivers. “When there’s no other dude in the car, the cost [of taking an Uber] gets cheaper than owning a vehicle.” 
   
   There's already an additional sign of a rift between the companies. Last week Google announced it would start presenting data from third party applications inside Google Now, a service that displays useful information prominently on the screen of Android smartphones. Google said it had struck deals to draw data from such apps as Pandora, AirBnb, Zillow, and the ride-sharing service Lyft. The company most obviously missing from that list? Google’s old and possibly former friend, Uber. 
   
   (Updates with Uber's Carnegie Mellon announcement in fourth paragraph.)
target: – Uber looks like it's trying to get in on the self-driving cars business, officially announcing this week that it's partnering with Carnegie Mellon University (home to the Mars Rover) to build the Uber Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh—in other words, "kickstart autonomous taxi fleet development," inside sources tell TechCrunch. And while Uber wouldn't say as much, sources allege that the company is hiring more than 50 senior scientists from the university, as well as an affiliated robotics research center; Uber does say the partnership will focus on "mapping and vehicle safety and autonomy technology." It's not the first time Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has talked about turning real drivers into robotic ones. Meanwhile Google, which Grist reports has thus far played nice with Uber by sharing Google Maps and investing $258 million in its app, might be ending that streak. Google appears to be creating its own ride-hailing app, reports Bloomberg Business, and is already well ahead of Uber when it comes to autonomous vehicles. Curiously, David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, is so far still maintaining a spot on Uber’s board, even though the two companies appear to be on the verge of becoming competitors. (Uber's legal troubles continue to mount around the world.)