Otto was a small, eight-month-old startup rigging semis with self-driving systems. Until last week — when it became a small, eight-month-old startup that Uber now owns.
We took a video tour of a self-driving semi from Otto, Uber’s newest purchase
What makes this big rig chug along all alone?
Otto
The proprietary tech that Otto is building is now a key part of Uber’s plans for autonomous vehicles. Otto says it will keep operating independently, moving toward its mission of retrofitting trucks with self-driving tech.
To check out the technology and trucks ourselves, we visited the company’s headquarters in a converted warehouse in downtown San Francisco. Eric Berdinis, a product manager for Otto, walked us through the hardware and computing that turns hunks of metal into hunks of metal that can drive themselves down highways.
Later, we took a drive inside one of Otto’s six test vehicles on the freeway, but the company is not quite ready for live video from there yet (liabilities and all). Stay tuned for footage from inside the cab.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
