Uber Technologies, popularly known for its cab-hailing app, Uber, rolled out its camera equipped cars. The fleet, which looks like that of Google's Street View, is tasked with mapping the streets and establishments.
Earlier this year, it was reported that Uber was planning to buy Microsoft's digital-navigation technology. It was revealed then that the network transportation firm will acquire specific assets of Bing Maps, such as 3D views and street imaging technology, along with more than a hundred engineers to work on the project.
Microsoft also invested more than $137 million in Uber. The move was seen as more of a seal to the partnership between Redmond and Uber rather than a venture.
"We filed to authorize this new funding more than two months ago," Kristin Carvell, spokesperson for Uber, said. "The filing is available to the public. We aren't commenting on additional speculation."
Months after the deal was closed, Uber's camera-equipped cars were spotted while mapping the streets of Florence, Kentucky, which one of the first areas that it decided to map.
"[Uber] hopes [that] this image-capturing technology will help inform routing and ETAs such that it becomes specific enough to avoid, for example, tricky intersections or streets that are frequently congested," an Uber spokesperson told Buzzfeed.
Buzzfeed also reports that Uber launched another fleet near its facility in Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and another within the vicinity of the University of Arizona. Both universities have a partnership with Uber. However, both fleets were not equipped with Bing Maps' technology, but with Uber's own set of mapping tools.
Nonetheless, both are meant to better map the streets for current drivers that are part of the Uber network and to prepare for when it launches its autonomous vehicle. As it seems, the race to develop a proper driverless car is intensifying. Google, Tesla and automobile manufacturers from all over the world are also developing their self-driving vehicles.
