This year’s TC Sessions: Mobility on October 6 & 7 will be a fantastic opportunity to find out all the latest on advancements in autonomy, micro-mobility, transportation AI and much more. Argo AI co-founder and CEO Bryan Salesky is among the best-positioned people in the world to speak to all those topics, and how they intersect with both the startup world, and legacy automaker giants like Ford and Volkswagen.

Salesky has a long history of focusing on the intersection of robotics and transportation dating all the way back to his work at the Carnegie Mellon University National Robotics Engineering Center, and CMU’s DARPA Urban Challenge winning competition entry in 2007. He was also an early team member for Google’s self-driving car project, which would eventually become Waymo, overseeing the search comnpany’s self-driving sensor, computer and vehicle hardware platform.

Since founding Argo AI in 2016, Salesky has also been at the center of some of the biggest and most influential developments in the autonomous vehicle industry. The startup first made waves with a $1 billion investment from automaker Ford in 2017, which gave Ford a majority stake in the venture. Then in 2019, Volkswagen announced a $2.6 billion investment in Argo, putting it at the center of the self-driving stack of now just one, but two of the world’s largest car companies.

As of July, Argo’s valuation sits at around $7.5 billion, making it a unicorn many times over. We’ll hear from Salesky how the company is helping both these industry heavyweights prepare for an autonomous future. We’ll also talk about the path to commercialization of these services, and how soon we can think about seeing them in active use as consumers.

Get your tickets for TC Sessions: Mobility to hear from Bryan Salesky along with several other fantastic speakers from Porsche, Waymo, Lyft, and more. Tickets are just $145 for a limited time with discounts for groups, students and exhibiting startups. We hope to see you there!

This year’s TC Sessions: Mobility on October 6 & 7 will be a fantastic opportunity to find out all the latest on advancements in autonomy, micro-mobility, transportation AI and much more. Argo AI co-founder and CEO Bryan Salesky is among the best-positioned people in the world to speak to all those topics, and how they intersect with both the startup world, and legacy automaker giants like Ford and Volkswagen.

Salesky has a long history of focusing on the intersection of robotics and transportation dating all the way back to his work at the Carnegie Mellon University National Robotics Engineering Center, and CMU’s DARPA Urban Challenge winning competition entry in 2007. He was also an early team member for Google’s self-driving car project, which would eventually become Waymo, overseeing the search comnpany’s self-driving sensor, computer and vehicle hardware platform.

Since founding Argo AI in 2016, Salesky has also been at the center of some of the biggest and most influential developments in the autonomous vehicle industry. The startup first made waves with a $1 billion investment from automaker Ford in 2017, which gave Ford a majority stake in the venture. Then in 2019, Volkswagen announced a $2.6 billion investment in Argo, putting it at the center of the self-driving stack of now just one, but two of the world’s largest car companies.

As of July, Argo’s valuation sits at around $7.5 billion, making it a unicorn many times over. We’ll hear from Salesky how the company is helping both these industry heavyweights prepare for an autonomous future. We’ll also talk about the path to commercialization of these services, and how soon we can think about seeing them in active use as consumers.

Get your tickets for TC Sessions: Mobility to hear from Bryan Salesky along with several other fantastic speakers from Porsche, Waymo, Lyft, and more. Tickets are just $145 for a limited time with discounts for groups, students and exhibiting startups. We hope to see you there!

SpaceX has big plans for its Boca Chica, Texas site – where it’s currently building and testing Starship, the company’s next-generation passenger and cargo spacecraft. A new job posting spotted by CNBC’s Micheal Sheetz seeks a “Resort Development Manager” to be based out of Brownsville, the nearest neighboring town to the small Boca Chica area where SpaceX has built out its existing test and development site.

The job posting seeks a manger to “oversee the development of SpaceX’s first resort from inception to completion,” with the ultimate aim of turning Boca Chica into a “21st century Spaceport.” That would include overseeing the entire design and construction process, as well as getting all necessary work permits and regulatory approvals, and completing the ultimate build of the facility.

SpaceX has provided some concept designs of what its ideal spaceports might look like, and CEO Elon Musk shared his intent to build floating spaceports for both interstellar and point-to-point Earth travel back in June, when the company announced it was seeking Offshore Operations Engineers, also to be located in Brownsville.

This new posting suggests that SpaceX will seek to create an end-to-end experience out of spaceflight, perhaps more in line with what Virgin Galactic is building at its Spaceport America site in New Mexico. Virgin has placed a lot of emphasis on the customer experience it is providing for its private space tourists, both in terms of its passenger space vehicle cabin, and the amenities available on the ground at the launch site.

SpaceX is readying its own vehicles for private astronaut launches, with announced plans to offer orbital return flights to paying customers using Dragon, which is now closer than ever to human flight certification thanks to having completed a return trip to Earth with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on board. That demonstration mission is the final requirement in its certification process, and SpaceX now looks on track to potentially fly private spacefarers as early as its target window of sometime next year.

Uber has bought UK based Autocab, which sells SaaS to the taxi and private hire vehicle industry, with the aim of expanding the utility of its own platform by linking users who open its app in places where it doesn’t offer trips to local providers who do.

No acquisition price has been disclosed and Uber declined to comment on the terms of the deal.

Autocab has a SaaS presence in 20 countries globally at this stage, according to an Uber spokeswoman. We’ve asked whether it will be closing a marketplace service which connects local taxi firms with trip bookers in any locations as a result of the Uber acquisition.

The Manchester-based veteran taxi software maker — which sells booking and despatch software as well as operating a global marketplace (iGo) which local firms can plug into to get more trips — was founded back in 1989, per Crunchbase.

Uber’s spokeswoman said it plans to support Autocab’s expansion of SaaS and iGo internationally — suggesting the tech giant hopes to be able to integrate the marketplace across its own global footprint in order to be able to offer users a less patchy service.

The move also looks intended to create more opportunities for Uber drivers to pick up jobs from outside its own platform, including delivery work.

In a press release announcing the acquisition, Uber said “thousands of people” open its app every month in places where they can’t get a trip. It lists 15 UK towns which fall into this category — headed by Oxford (with 67,099 app opens monthly) and Tunbridge Wells (46,150); or at the other end Colchester (16,540) and Ipswich (16,539).

“Through Autocab’s iGo marketplace, Uber will be able to connect these riders with local operators who choose to take their booking. In turn, operators should be able to expand their operations and offer more earnings opportunities to local drivers. Uber will also explore providing drivers with additional revenue opportunities related to its platform for other services, such as delivery,” it added.

According to Bloomberg, Uber won’t be integrating Autocab’s marketplace in markets where it already offers a service, such as London — so there does look to be an element of Uber using the purchase to shore up its own key markets by closing down the chance of a little locally flavored competition.

Uber’s rides business has been hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, which has squeezed demand for on-demand transportation, as many professionals switching to remote work at home. Social distancing requirements have also hit the nightlife industry, further eating into demand for Uber’s service.

All of which makes life hard for Uber’s ‘self employed‘ drivers — giving the company an incentive to find ways to retain their service during a leaner time for on-demand trips when they may otherwise abandon the platform, damaging its ability to provide a reliable service.

For Autocab’s part, the acquisition offers a road to further global expansion. It will remain independent with its own board after the acquisition, per the pair’s press release — retaining its focus on serving the taxi and private hire vehicle industry globally.

Commenting in a statement, Jamie Heywood, Uber’s regional GM for Northern & Eastern Europe, said: “Autocab has worked successfully with taxi and private hire operators around the world for more than thirty years and Uber has a lot to learn from their experience. We look forward to working with the Autocab team to help local operators grow and provide drivers with genuine earnings opportunities.”

Autocab CEO, Safa Alkatab, added: “Autocab has been working with local operators across the world to provide the technology to make them more efficient and open up a marketplace to provide more trips. Working with Uber we can scale up our ambitions, providing hundreds of thousands of additional trips for our customers, and help cement the place of licenced operators in their local community.”

Virgin Orbit’s first attempt at an orbital launch demo may not have gone entirely to plan (the LauncherOne rocket released as planned but its flight was cut short just after that), but it has booked a payload for its next try – 11 science satellites selected by NASA and primarily designed and built by U.S. universities. Virgin says that it will fly this second launch demo, complete with its cargo, sometime “before the end of the year.”

After the first attempt was cut short prior to the planned conclusion of the rocket, which was aiming to accomplish a more sustained flight of the empty LauncherOne rocket, potentially even to orbital altitude, the Virgin Orbit team conducted a comprehensive investigation of the cause of the issue encountered. That investigation is now nearly complete, the company says, and in a blog cost they note the cause of the mission-ending failure – a broken high-pressure line that is supplies LauncherOne’s rocket engine with liquid oxygen, a required component for the combustion that drives thrust.

Virgin notes that it still has some work to do before the investigation is technically complete, but the small satellite space launch company says it’s confident it knows what technical fixes are needed to prevent the same thing from happening in future, and it’s already in the process of implementing those.

NASA was one of Virgin Orbit’s first customers, and naturally after Launch Demo 1 didn’t go quite to plan, Virgin told the agency they’d have to bump their upcoming payload launch down the line, since Demo 2 would need to be another test without risking any payloads on board to try to achieve the goals of the flubbed first flight. NASA, however, said they’d be comfortable flying payloads on the next attempt regardless.

That shows a tremendous amount of confidence in Virgin Orbit and their program. That end of year target launch timeframe is also highly ambitious by any standards in the space launch industry, but the company says it’s still going to aim for that while at the same time focusing on making sure everything is up to standards in terms of technical details and issue resolution.

Virgin Orbit is hoping to be offering regular operational launches of its system soon. The company’s approach involves flying a rocket attached to a modified 747 carrier aircraft to an altitude around where large passenger jets fly, whereupon the rocket separates from the plane and ignites its own engine to carry small payloads the rest of the way to space.

Virgin Galactic is making strides towards its goal of creating high-speed commercial aircraft that operates a little closer to Earth than its existing passenger spacecraft. The company revealed the initial design of the commercial passenger airplane it’s creating that’s designed to fly at speeds in excess of Mach 3 – faster than the average cruising speed of around Mach 2 that the original Concorde achieved.

This concept design comes alongside a new partnership for Virgin Galactic, by way of a memorandum of understanding that the company signed with Rolls-Royce, one of the world’s leading aircraft engine makers. Rolls-Royce is also responsible for the engine of the Concorde, the only supersonic commercial aircraft ever used for passenger travel.

Virgin Galactic announced in May that it would be partnering with NASA to work towards high-speed, high altitude point-to-point travel for commercial airline passengers. The plan is to eventually create an aircraft that can fly above 60,000 feet (the cruising altitude of the Concorde) and carry between 9 and 19 people per fly, with a cabin essentially set up to provide each of those passengers with either Business or First Class-style seating and service. One other key element of the design is that it be powered by next-gen sustainable fuel for more ecological operation.

[gallery ids="2026343,2026344,2026345"]

In some ways, this project has many of the same goals that NASA has with its X-59 Quiet Supersonic research aircraft. Both aim to inspire the industry at large to do more to pursue the development of high-Mach point-to-point travel, and Virgin says that one of its aims is to “act as a catalyst to adoption in the rest of the aviation community” by coming up with baseline “sustainable technologies and techniques.”

Virgin Galactic’s manufacturing subsidiary, The Spaceship Company, also has a partnership in place with startup Boom Supersonic to help develop their supersonic civil passenger aircraft. Boom is set to unveil and begin testing its XB-1 prototype at an event in October, and also recently announced a new partnership with Rolls-Royce to assist with the design and manufacture of the engines for its eventual Overture commercial plane.

Boom Supersonic, the Colorado -based startup working on creating a supersonic passenger jet to continue and dramatically advance the legacy of the original Concorde, has signed on Rolls-Royce to build the propulsion system for its Overture commercial aircraft. Boom is getting very close to actually beginning to fly its XB-1, a subscale demonstrator aircraft that will test and prove out many of the technologies that will be used to bring Overture to life.

This isn’t the first time Boom and Rolls-Royce have worked together: The two companies have had a number of different collaborations on aspects of their development process to date, Boom notes. Rolls-Royce has a history of developing engines for civil aircraft applications dating all the way back to World War II and is the second-largest maker of aircraft engines in the world.

Boom’s relative newcomer status should benefit greatly from the long tradition Rolls-Royce has in creating aircraft propulsion systems — and it doesn’t hurt that Rolls-Royce had a hand in creating the Olympus 593 turbojet that powered the original Concorde.

The Overture aims to be the world’s fastest passenger aircraft, with flights taking half the time they do on conventional commercial jets (New York to London in just three-and-a-half hours, for instance). The company aims to provide essentially dedicated business class service to a frequent business traveler clientele, and to do so sometime in the next five to 10 years.

The XB-1 demonstrator jet has a set reveal date of October 7 this year, which is the first time we’ll get a first-hand look at a fully functional aircraft that Boom really intends to fly.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk noted on Twitter on Tuesday night that the automaker would be “open to licensing software and supplying powertrains & batteries” to other automakers. Musk added that that would even include Autopilot, the advanced driver assistance software that Tesla offers to provide intelligent cruise control in a number of different driving scenarios.

Musk was addressing a Teslerati article about how German automakers are looking to close the technology gap between themselves and Tesla when it comes to producing EVs. Volkswagen Chairman Herbert Diess has in past comments expressed admiration for Musk and Tesla’s accomplishments on multiple occasions.

VW has created its own EV platform, which it intends to use as the base for a number of different electric cars, ranging from sport sedans to SUVs. The company is also openly pursuing licensing its MEB platform to other automakers, and struck such a deal with Ford last July for the American automaker’s European business.

Musk says that Tesla’s interest in licensing stems from its underlying goal, which is “to accelerate sustainable energy, not crush competitors” according to his tweet. This isn’t the first time the automaker has indicated a willingness to be more open in pursuit of that goal, either: In 2014, Musk penned a blog post announcing that Tesla would be making its intellectual property freely available to “anyone who, in good faith, wants to use [its] technology.”

Of course, that hasn’t stopped Tesla from taking aim at potential competitors via legal action on occasion – it filed suit against electric automaker Rivian and four of its former employees last week, alleging theft of trade secrets and poaching key talent.

A platform licensing or supplier relationship would be an entirely different arrangement, of course, and one with plenty of precedent in the automaker industry. Nor would it necessarily negatively impact Tesla’s own auto sales, since the company offers a number of other selling points above and beyond its underlying powertrain and battery tech.

At the time of Volkswagen’s announcement, the German automaker said it expects it could make up to $20 billion in revenue through the MEB deal with Ford, with a significant chunk of that coming from MEB parts and components supply. Tesla could realize similar gains but perhaps amplified globally, especially if it can ramp powertrain and battery production beyond the capacity needs of its own vehicle demand capacity.

Ford is going to employ two of Boston Dynamics’ ‘Spot’ robots, which are four-legged, dog-like walking robots that weigh roughly 70 lbs each, to help them update the original engineering plans for one of the transmission manufacturing plans. The plants, Ford explains, have undergone any number of changes since their original construction, and it’s difficult to know if the plans they have match up with the reality of the plants as they exist today. The Spot robots, with their laser scanning and imaging capabilities, will be able to produce highly-detailed and accurate maps that Ford engineers can then use to modernize and retool the facility.

There are a few benefits that Ford hopes to realize by employing the Spot robots in place of humans to map the facility: First, they should save a considerable amount of time, since they replace a time-intensive process of setting up a tripod with a laser scanner at various points throughout the facility and spending a while at each location manually capturing the environment. The Spot dogs are roving and scanning continuously, providing a reduction of up to 50% in terms of actual time to complete the facility scan.

The robot dogs are also equipped with five cameras as well as laser scanners, and can operate for up to two hours travelling at around 3 mph continuously. The data they collect can then be synthesized for a more complete overall picture, and because of their small size and nimble navigation capabilities, they can map areas of the plant that aren’t necessarily reachable by people attempting to do the same job.

This is a pilot program that Ford is conducting, using two Spot robots leased by Boston Dynamics . But if it works out the way they seem to think it will, you can imagine that the automaker might seek to expand the program to cover other efforts at more of its manufacturing facilities.

A number of ride-sharing companies are feeling the strain from reduced business, with many consumers still reluctant to travel, and especially to travel in surroundings that might increase the risk of spreading or catching the novel coronavirus. But today, one of the startups in the space is announcing a significant round of funding to continue growing in its target sector of corporate travel, underscoring where there may still be some existing and growing opportunities.

Gett, the London and Israel-based ride-sharing company that competes with the likes of Uber and many others to provide private car rides on-demand, has raised $100 million. Gett’s CEO and founder Dave Waiser told TechCrunch that it is all primary equity capital, and the company says it plans to use it to continue investing in its B2B business, which has been growing — not shrinking or staying flat — in the midst of the global health pandemic.

“The way people move around in cities is changing dramatically as a result of COVID-19 and businesses are seeking to optimise costs and to put in place efficient and safe ground travel solutions for their employees,” said Waiser, in a statement. “Our mobility software is helping businesses thrive by empowering people to be their best on the go. Being fully funded and reaching a key milestone in our profitability journey is an important step for the Company. The proceeds will help us grow our unique corporate SaaS platform internationally, while we consider an IPO in the future, to further accelerate our expansion.”

The company turned operationally profitable in December 2019 and had said it planned to go public in 2020, but it sounds like that timeline, if it happens, has now been pushed back to 2021. Gett says it has met its “original financial targets that were set pre-COVID-19.” It also reached profitability in each of its core markets in June, and is on target now to be cashflow positive in 2021, ahead of a “potential” IPO.

“It’s a luxury, enabling flexibility for the company to go public when it’s best, rather than from the cash needs reasoning as many (money losing) companies have to do nowadays,” Waiser said.

Gett is not disclosing the names of any of its investors in this round except to note that it’s a mix of new and existing backers, nor is it disclosing its valuation.

Waiser said the reason for that is that the round is still open and oversubscribed, so it plans to announce a list of investors after it closes.

For some context, though, Gett has now raised $750 million with investors including VW, Access and its founder Len Blavatnik, Kreos, MCI and more, and its last valuation was $1.5 billion, pegged to a $200 million fundraise in May 2019.

Gett started operations years ago serving both consumers and corporate users but in recent years has honed its focus specifically on business accounts. No surprise, when you think about it, considering the capital intensiveness, competitiveness, and subsequent poor unit economics of scaling a consumer-focused ridesharing business (a confluence of factors we’ve seen played out at Uber, Lyft, Grab and many others).

Gett’s turn to B2B has seen it pick up some 15,000 corporate customers, including one-third of the Fortune 500. What has been interesting too is the approach Gett has taken to scale: today, it provides rides in some 1,500 cities, but a part of that footprint is served not directly by Gett but in a partnership with Lyft — the result of a deal Gett inked with the company in November 2019 after the former shut down its Juno operations in New York City. It’s been expanding that list to include other third-party partnerships in the mix.

While partnerships may not yield margins as strong as those Gett has in direct operations, it provides a plethora of analytics and invoicing services around the actual ride, and secures the corporate accounts, which provides other revenue streams to offset that. It claims that its services ultimately undercut other ground transportation options for corporates by about 25%.

While a lot of consumers may have curtailed their Uber rides in recent months, the business market has had seen a turn to ensuring that the travel that its users are taking is well-controlled when it has to be done, specifically to meet specific safety standards. That has been the sweet spot for Gett, with its very specific B2B approach.

“The completion of the fundraising during the pandemic is a clear expression of confidence by our shareholders and new investors in Gett’s vision to focus on the corporate market and its plan to expand globally, as well as in the Company’s strong operational and financial performance,” said Amos Genish, Gett chairman, in a statement.

A group of UK Uber drivers has launched a legal challenge against the company’s subsidiary in the Netherlands. The complaints relate to access to personal data and algorithmic accountability.

Uber drivers and Uber Eats couriers are being invited to join the challenge which targets Uber’s use of profiling and data-fuelled algorithms to manage gig workers in Europe. Platform workers involved in the case are also seeking to exercise a broader suite of data access rights baked into EU data protection law.

It looks like a fascinating test of how far existing legal protections wrap around automated decisions at a time when regional lawmakers are busy drawing up a risk-based framework for regulating applications of artificial intelligence.

Many uses of AI technology look set to remain subject only to protections baked into the existing General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). So determining how far existing protections extend in the context of modern data-driven platforms is important.

The European Commission is also working on rebooting liability rules for platforms, with a proposal for a Digital Services Act due by the year’s end. As part of that work it’s actively consulting on related issues such as data portability and platform worker rights — so the case looks very timely.

Via the lawsuit, which has been filed in Amsterdam’s district court today, the group of Uber drivers from London, Birmingham, Nottingham and Glasgow will argue the tech giant is failing to comply with the GDPR and will ask the court to order immediate compliance — urging it be fined €10,000 for each day it fails to comply.

They will also ask the court to order Uber to comply with a request to enable them to port personal data held in the platform to a data trust they want to establish, administered by a union.

For its part Uber UK said it works hard to comply with data access requests, further claiming it provides explanations when it’s unable to provide data.

Data rights to crack open an AI blackbox?

The GDPR gives EU citizens data access rights over personal information held on them, including a right to obtain a copy of data they have provided so that it can be reused elsewhere.

The regulation also provides some additional access rights for individuals who are subject to wholly automated decision making processes where there is a substantial legal or similar impact — which looks relevant here because Uber’s algorithms essentially determine the earning potential of a driver or courier based on how the platforms assigns (or withholds) jobs from the available pool.

As we wrote two years ago, Article 22 of the GDPR offers a potential route to put a check on the power of AI blackboxes to determine the trajectory of humankind — because it requires that data controllers provide some information about the logic of the processing to affected individuals. Although it’s unclear how much detail they have to give, hence the suit looks set to test the boundaries of Article 22, as well as making reference to more general transparency and data access rights baked into the regulation.

James Farrar, an Uber driver who is supporting the action — and who was also one of the lead claimants in a landmark UK tribunal action over Uber driver employment rights (which is, in related news, due to reach the UK Supreme Court tomorrow, as Uber has continued appealing the 2016 ruling) — confirmed the latest challenge is “full spectrum” in the GDPR rights regard.

The drivers made subject access requests to Uber last year, asking the company for detailed data about how its algorithm profiles and performance manages them. “Multiple drivers have been provided access to little or no data despite making a comprehensive request and providing clear detail on the data requested,” they write in a press release today.

Farrar confirmed that Uber provided him with some data last year, after what he called “multiple and continuous requests”, but he flagged multiple gaps in the information — such as GPS data only being provided for a month out of two years’ of work; no information on the trip rating assigned to him by passengers; and no information on his profile nor the tags assigned to it.

“I know Uber maintain a profile on me but they have never revealed it,” he told TechCrunch, adding that the same is true of performance tags.

“Under GDPR Uber must explain the logic of processing, it never really has explained management algorithms and how they work to drivers. Uber has never explained to me how they process the electronic performance tags attached to my profile for instance.

“Many drivers have been deactivated with bogus claims of ‘fraudulent use’ being detected by Uber systems. This is another area of transparency required by law but which Uber does not uphold.”

The legal challenge is being supported by the App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU) which says it will argue Uber drivers are subject to performance monitoring at work.

It also says it will present evidence of how Uber has attached performance related electronic tags to driver profiles with categories including: Late arrival/missed ETAs; Cancelled on rider; Attitude; Inappropriate behaviour.

“This runs contrary to Uber’s insistence in many employment misclassification legal challenges across multiple jurisdictions worldwide that drivers are self-employed and not subject to management control,” the drivers further note in their press release.

Commenting in a statement, their attorney, Anton Ekker of Ekker Advocatuur, added: “With Uber BV based in the Netherlands as operator of the Uber platform, the Dutch courts now have an important role to play in ensuring Uber’s compliance with the GDPR. This is a landmark case in the gig economy with workers asserting their digital rights for the purposes of advancing their worker rights.”

The legal action is being further supported by the International Alliance of App-based Transport (IAATW) workers in what the ADCU dubs an “unprecedented international collaboration”.

Reached for comment on the challenge, Uber emailed us the following statement:

Our privacy team works hard to provide any requested personal data that individuals are entitled to. We will give explanations when we cannot provide certain data, such as when it doesn’t exist or disclosing it would infringe on the rights of another person under GDPR. Under the law, individuals have the right to escalate their concerns by contacting Uber’s Data Protection Officer or their national data protection authority for additional review.

The company also told us it responded to the drivers’ subject access requests last year, saying it had not received any further correspondence since.

It added that it’s waiting to see the substance of the claims in court.

The unions backing the case are pushing for Uber to hand over driver data to a trust they want to administer.

Farrar’s not-for-profit, Worker Info Exchange (WIE), wants to establish a data trust for drivers for the purposes of collective bargaining.

“Our union wants to establish a data trust but we are blocked in doing so long as Uber do not disclose in a consistent way and not obstruct the process. API would be best,” he said on that, adding: “But the big issue here is that 99.99% of drivers are fobbed off with little or no proper access to data or explanation of algorithm.”

In a note about WIE on the drivers’ attorney’s website the law firm says other Uber drivers can participate by providing their permission for the not-for-profit to put in a data request on their behalf, writing:

Worker Info Exchange aims to tilt the balance away from big platforms in favour of the people who make these companies so successful every day – the workers.

Uber drivers can participate by giving Worker Info Exchange their mandate to send a GDPR-request on their behalf.

The drivers have also launched a Crowdjustice campaign to help raise £30,000 to fund the case.

Discussing the legal challenge and its implications for Uber, Newcastle University law professor Lilian Edwards suggested the tech giant will have to show it has “suitable safeguards” in place around its algorithm, assuming the challenge focuses on Article 22.

“Article 22 normally gives you the right to demand that a decision made in a solely automated way — such as the Uber algorithm — should either not be made or made by a human. In this case Uber might claim however, with some success, that the algorithm was necessary for the Uber context with the driver,” she told us.

“However that doesn’t clear their path. They still have to provide ‘suitable safeguards’ — the biggest of which is the much-discussed right to an explanation of how the algorithm works. But noone knows how that might operate.

“Would a general statement of roughly how the algorithm operates suffice? What a worker would want instead is to know specifically how it made decisions based on his data — and maybe how it discriminated against him or disfavoured him. Uber may argue that’s simply impossible for them to do. They might also say it reveals too much about their internal trade secrets. But it’s still terrific to finally have a post GDPR case exploring these issues.”

In its guidance on Article 22 requirements on its website, the UK’s data watchdog, the ICO, specifies that data controllers “must provide meaningful information about the logic involved in the decision-making process, as well as the significance and the envisaged consequences for the individual”.

It also notes Article 22 requires that individuals who are subject to automated decisions must be able to obtain human review of the outcome if they ask. The law also allows them to challenge algorithmic decisions. While data controllers using automation in this way must take steps to prevent bias and discrimination.

Another small rocket launcher is readying to demonstrate their ability to launch a vehicle to space, after a few setbacks exacerbated by the ongoing COVID-19 situation. Astra has just completed a second static test fire of its Rocket 3.1 orbital launch vehicle, and that means it’s now ready for a trip to Alaska where it’ll hopefully make its first trip to orbit from a spaceport in Kodiak.

Astra originally started out as a company with the specific goal of answering the DARPA launch challenge, which asked companies to create a launch vehicle that could tech orbit within a few weeks of each other (originally from separate launch sites, but then later only from separate pads at the same spaceport). The challenge expired without Astra claiming the price, after the 3.0 version of their Rocket failed to reach orbit.

The company has developed, tested and flown three successive generations of Rocket, mostly without much in the way of public fanfare or information sharing. The startup builds its small rockets, which measure roughly 40-feet tall, in Alameda, California at their own factory. In an interview with TechCrunch ahead of their DARPA challenge attempt, Astra CEO and founder Chris Kemp explained that their approach is focused on rapid, at-scale manufacturing and potential failure margins that might be higher than the existing launch companies tolerate.

A kind of mass-market delivery system approach definitely has advantages, and Astra has focused on a launch system that’s much more portable than others for deployment almost anywhere in the world. The company is also focused on small payloads, which it can deliver responsively, so a loss of such a spacecraft wouldn’t be nearly as expensive as, say, a rocket failing and losing a large geosynchronous GPS satellite.

Rocket 3.1 sounds like a relatively minor iteration on Rocket 3.0, vs the large full point updates of prior generations. Astra says it’s currently headed to Kodiak, and that the company is now working to finalize a launch window, with a date to be confirmed for that next big test early next week.