Voyage is being spun off from Udacity, the online learning company that offers a course in programming autonomous cars. Udacity was founded by Sebastian Thrun, who started Google’s self-driving vehicle program and has been one of the field’s biggest names for 10 years.
Thrun won’t join Voyage. But it will be led by Oliver Cameron, Udacity’s vice president of engineering. He announced the company’s formation Wednesday on social media, following a report on Voyage in Business Insider.
“We’re deploying autonomous taxis to real users very, very soon,” Cameron wrote on his Facebook and LinkedIn pages. According to Voyage’s LinkedIn page, the startup has four employees, Cameron included.
Other, more established companies are pursuing the same goal.
Uber has been testing robotic taxis (with humans behind the steering wheel) in Pittsburgh. Ford Motor Co. CEO Mark Fields committed his company last year to building autonomous taxis by 2021. Electric-auto maker Tesla also plans a fleet of self-driving cars that can be hailed for rides.
Voyage will focus on retrofitting cars with self-driving technology rather than designing and building its own car from scratch.
Udacity already has a self-driving car created as part of its programming course, which now has 6,600 students worldwide. But Udacity executives told Business Insider that Voyage won’t use technology developed by Udacity students.
Thrun told Business Insider he isn’t taking part in the new company because of “personal conflicts.”
A Udacity spokeswoman declined to say Thursday what those conflicts are. But the self-driving industry has seen at least two lawsuits recently over high-profile engineers leaving one company to start another.
“Wishing Oliver and his team all of the best!” Thrun wrote Wednesday night on Facebook.
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