Sensors Driving the Uber Self Driving Car

I have had a bunch of questions from friends about how the Uber self driving car works. The simple answer is that I don’t know. I have no relation to, or inside knowledge of what Uber is doing. However I can look at the outside of the vehicle and try to guess what sensors I can see. I have only seen a Uber self driving car once, it was driving by as I was driving in the opposite direction, so I did not get a good view. That means that this post is based on images found via google.

These pictures are based on the Ford vehicles. There are some news stories about a deal to get 100 Volvo cars for the main passenger service. There are a few Volvo pictures out that seem to be CAD (ie. drawings) and not actual images. Those show significantly less sensors and a cleaner integration. It makes sense that initial vehicles are a testbed to figure out what sensors you actually need and to help with mapping. Then the “production” vehicle would have far fewer sensors (and cost less to manufacture). I should also point out that many pictures I have seen are slightly different but are of a similiar design.

So here is an unorganized list of what I see.

• Velodyne 64 LIDAR(2.2 Million points per second):
  Mounted to the highest point of the vehicle
• Velodyne PUCK LIDAR (only 300,000 points per second):
  Front bumper center
  Left side of top sensor pod
  Right side of top sensor pod
  Fin near rear passenger door
  Fin near rear driver door
  Center of rear bumper
• Cameras (I would estimate a little over 20 cameras on the vehicle):
  1 forward camera on upper car deck
  6 on top deck looking forward (lenses appear to be different, in 1 of the pictures it seems a camera hole might not have a camera)
  2 on top deck looking front left
  2 on top deck looking front right
  2 on top deck looking rear left
  2 on top deck looking rear right
  2 on top deck rear facing
  Maybe manufacturer cameras integrated with the side mirrors and rear facing. Not sure if Uber would be using them.
• Smaller dots near 6 cameras and on other parts of top deck: Are they mounting holes or sensors?
• Antennas:
  Located on top deck (Maybe Laird):
  4 short black
  4 slightly taller black
  Maybe used for a local wifi, a wifi to communicate with other cars, a wireless e-stop, RTK (for improving GPS position), some for redundancy and/or multiple frequencies.
• GPS (I know these are antennas and maybe should be added to list above):
  3 on top of the trunk(or boot for some folks)
  1 in the center of top deck. Possibly used with a rear GPS to get heading.
  They look like Garmins
• In the rear center of the top rack I can’t tell if there is a sensor, or if it is just a mounting bracket.
• There appears to be something clipped to the front bumper. I am not sure if that is a sensor, or if it is a laser (maybe IR, would the sun wash an IR laser out??) projecting a pattern for a camera to detect.
• 4 dots on back of the vehicle could be manufacturer backup alert sensors. Some pictures also appear to have them on the front. I don’t think Uber would be using those.

Here are a few things I did not see, but you might find in the vehicle:

• RADAR’s. I expected to see some to help in dusty, foggy, rainy, etc… conditions. They can be easier to hide.
• An encoder added to one of the tires. Most images I find are of the passenger side, are they hiding it on the driver side??
• Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) for getting the roll and pitch (ie. the angle) of the vehicle and position estimation.
• I would not be surprised if there was a camera (or two) in the vehicle

A reader sent in this picture showing a charging port.

I hope you found this list interesting. If you know more about what sensors are in use leave it in the comments below.

Here are the main image I used for the list above:

Links to images above:
http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2016/08/18/ap_16231695031668_wide-31cd441342d00b8a018b731a1ef36d01f372a4b2-s900-c85.jpg

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/eace1b22f2ed97ee6d861206e321422c07ea0da5/0_323_4839_2903/master/4839.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=0de176ac42a33422316c9d4534fc11a0

https://storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod/media/media:52414188e04d4e5b9be8db1dd61e02b5/800.jpeg

http://www.trbimg.com/img-57b615ad/turbine/ct-uber-self-driving-car-pittsburgh-20160818

Liked it? Take a second to support David Kohanbash on Patreon!