Uber came to Pittsburgh in early 2015, drawn by the engineering talent at Carnegie Mellon. The university started a robotics department 30 years ago, when driverless cars seemed like a fantasy, but robotics has since proved crucial for the systems that let vehicles navigate streets on their own.
By this decade, the university’s expertise in computer science had attracted not only Uber but also General Motors, Google and Intel, some of which embedded at Carnegie Mellon. Google and Uber later opened research centers, hiring dozens of Carnegie Mellon professors and graduate students.