A complaint made to the Northern District of California by Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Waymo could see the celebrated launch of Uber’s Otto last year May soiled for as long as Uber engineers could come up with a LiDAR system of their “own”.
Waymo is suing Uber for an unspecified amount for using Waymo’s LiDAR system. Besides the money they also want the court to bar the ride service company from using the technology on their autonomous trucks.
Apparently existing LiDAR technology are uneconomical which prompted Waymo to come up with a system that is 90% cheaper compared to anything similar in existence. Well, which manufacturer wouldn’t want this!
From the allegations levelled against Uber, looks like the company decided to short-cut the processes of building their own autonomous truck by using Waymo’s technology.
How did Uber lay their hands on the coveted technology?
Apparently, Lidar is Waymo’s single most valuable asset and you will wonder how reckless could they be in handling it. Well, carelessness you may not call it that because someone ought to have had security clearance to access the confidential files.
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Waymo named Anthony Levandowski, a former Google self-driving executive in the saga. It is reported that prior to Levandowski’s January 2016 resignation he was able to download a whopping 14,000 top secret files and LiDAR Circuit Board designs that was used to build Uber’s autonomous truck was among them.
It might however, be hard to link Levandowski to the theft if Waymo’s accusation that the former executive attempted “to erase any forensic fingerprints” by reformatting the laptop he used in the operation.
Uber not admitting theft
You would think that Uber would come up categorically and condemn the accusation but that was actually not the case, and neither did they admit using Waymo’s technology.
Uber in a statement said and I quote, “…we are taking the allegations made against otto and uber employees seriously and we will review this matter seriously” In another statement however, Uber terms Waymo’s accusation as “ a baseless attempt to slow down a competitor”
Uber & Otto’s fate
If the ruling is made in favor of Waymo, then this might leave Uber’s autonomous trucks production in hitches as LiDAR is the system that facilitates communication between the vehicle and its environment.
