Uber has announced a new partnership with May Mobility to bring thousands of self-driving taxis to the streets of the United States. The first fleet of autonomous minivans will be deployed in Arlington, Texas, by the end of this year, with plans to expand to other markets in the coming years.
Prior to this collaboration, May Mobility offered rides in its driverless Toyota Sienna minivans within specific campuses and planned communities. In Arlington, the startup teamed up with the University of Texas to offer on-demand robotaxi rides to popular destinations around town, focusing primarily on the campus area.
The partnership with Uber will allow May Mobility to reach a wider customer base, while also adding another autonomous vehicle partner to Uber’s roster, which includes established players like Waymo and Volkswagen. Customers in Arlington will soon have the option to choose a May Mobility vehicle when booking a ride through the Uber app. Initially, human safety operators will be present in the vehicles, with the transition to fully driverless rides expected in the future.
What sets May Mobility’s autonomous vehicle technology apart is its Multi-Policy Decision Making (MPDM) system, which utilizes real-time reinforcement-learning algorithms to adapt and learn on the go. This innovative approach allows the vehicles to generate training examples based on their current environment every 200 milliseconds, enabling continuous learning and improvement.
According to May Mobility, this technology enables them to deploy autonomous vehicles more cost-effectively and efficiently than traditional methods, all while ensuring a high level of reliability and safety in driverless transportation. The startup has already completed 100,000 autonomous rides through its Rapid AV pilot program, showcasing the reliability and effectiveness of its autonomous vehicle technology.
Overall, the partnership between Uber and May Mobility represents a significant step forward in the development and deployment of self-driving taxis in the United States. With plans to introduce thousands of robotaxis on the streets in the near future, this collaboration has the potential to revolutionize the way people commute and travel in urban areas.