Uber: Waymo’s allegations are demonstrably false

Uber argues in court that Alphabet subsidiary Waymo’s allegations of lidar technology theft are “demonstrably false” and merely a tactic to thwart Uber’s progress in self-driving cars.

Uber made the comment on Friday in the courtroom in San Francisco, with the Wall Street Journal present, among others. used to be. According to Uber, the laser sensor system it uses on its self-driving cars is completely different from what Waymo uses. This would mainly be apparent from the fact that Waymo lidar works with a single lens and Uber’s equipment with four. In addition, Uber admits that its sensors come from Velodyne, a US manufacturer of such sensors. Waymo has also worked with Velodyne equipment in the past, but is now developing its own lidar system to reduce costs and better achieve goals.

Waymo claims former Google employee Anthony Levandowski took a total of 14,000 files full of technical data about Google’s sensors when he left in 2016. After his departure, Levandowski founded Otto, a company that researched self-driving trucks. That company has again been bought by Uber and Levandowski is now also leading the research into self-driving cars for that company.

On the one hand, Uber denies that the documents that Levandowski stole are present within the company, but on the other, the ex-Google employee invokes Article five of the US Constitution. It states that no one can be compelled to testify against himself. He also does not open his personal computer for a search. Uber acknowledges that this “puts the company in a complicated situation.”

The files involved a total of 9.7GB of data, including 2GB of files about Waymo’s lidar technology. The similarities between Otto and Waymo’s lidar designs came to light when Waymo accidentally received an email from a supplier containing a drawing of a lidar circuit board.

It is not yet known whether the requested provisional ban on the use of lidar technology will be imposed on Uber.