Uber for the most part has been pretty reliable, and if you don’t manage to get an Uber chances are it has to do with the supply of Uber cars and drivers, rather than the service being bad at securing you a driver. However we suppose its service could always be improved upon, and Uber is turning to the use of high-res satellite images to do that.In an announcement by DigitalGlobe, a satellite imaging company, they announced a multi-year global partnership between them and Uber, where they will be providing Uber access to its high-res satellite imagery to help improve its pickups. “Specifically Uber will leverage DigitalGlobe’s industry leading constellation of sensors to access imagery and location intelligence to help identify and improve pick-up and drop-off locations.”
For those unfamiliar with DigitalGlobe, they were the company that convinced the US government to lift the restrictions on image resolution for private satellites. Thanks to that, its satellites are able to detect images as small as 12-inches across, and can even see through forest fire smoke which would block other satellites.
Like we said, Uber for the most part has been pretty reliable, but we guess with the high-res satellite images that they will have access to, trying to find out where exactly a customer is should be much easier than before. We doubt that Uber customers will be able to feel this partnership, at least not more so than Uber and its drivers, but hopefully the end result is a much better experience.
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