Uber will be open its new Advanced Technology Centre in Paris, with focus on AI and its Uber Elevate program, the company announced Thursday. The plan is to send flying taxis soaring over cities, but building them will be orders of magnitude harder than anything it has ever done. The research center, which will be Uber's first outside North America, will open this fall and see a €20 million ($23.5 million) investment over the next five years.
The ride-hailing company also announced a 5-year research partnership with École Polytechnique, a prestigious engineering school based in Palaiseau, a suburb southwest of Paris. Their initial projects will focus on AI, aviation and all-electric transport, air traffic control and other tech necessary for the service.
Uber will recruit engineers, AI specialists and computer vision researchers when the centre opens this fall.
"Initial projects will include: machine learning-based transport demand modeling, high-density low-altitude air traffic management simulations, integration of innovative airspace transport solutions with European aviation regulators such as EASA, and the development of smart grids to support future fleets of electric transport on the ground and in the air," Uber said in a press release.
