In a new twist against Alphabet’s self-driving car subsidiary Waymo’s battle against Uber, the former has accused the latter of hiding a secret LiDAR device up its sleeves. Waymo has alleged that Uber is hiding crucial informatio pertaining to the tehnology it uses in its cars. The new claims were filed in preparation for a preliminary injunction hearing against Uber, next month.
Waymo has been claiming that its’s ex-employee Anthony Levandowski, stole its in-house technology and used it to start off his own venture, Otto. Otto was later acquired by Uber and the associated technology also passed on to the cab aggregator.
Waymo filed a lawsuit against the cab aggregator, claiming that Uber is using its LiDAR technology to kick off and hurry its own self-driving program. However, earlier this month, Uber said that it wasn’t using any system developed in-house at all and indeed, it was sourcing its tecnology from a third party.
Now, in its fresh claims, Waymo has said that Uber also has a second, hidden system somewhere that it has also contrived to keep from the court’s sights. Uber has said that yes, it does have a second system but it wasn’t ever developed into a full-fledged system and merely consisted of a few parts.
Well, a lot will now depend upon how far research into the second system has proceeded and, whether, the court decided to extend a tendrol of inquiry into that direction.
Uber could fnd itself in trouble if the system turns out to be advanced and a copy of Waymo’s own systems — particularly since it only came to notice when Asheem Linaval, an electrical engineer at Uber who previously worked for Google and then Levandowski’s 510 Systems told the the court that engineers had worked on two LiDAR designs for Otto — one of which was the Fuji that Uber claimed as its only, not-quite-ready, self-driving system.
