Among the recent exits is the head of its mapping team, Brett Browning, and the head of its autonomy and perception team, Drew Bagnell, three sources have told Recode. The departures were announced in an email Uber sent its employees the first week of December.  In September, Peter Rander, an engineering lead who specializes in the commercialization of robotics, also left the company. The three engineers were poached by Uber from Carnegie Mellon, Carnegie Robotics or the National Robotics Engineering Center, which is affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University, in January 2015. It’s not clear what the next step is for the engineers, though Rander lists himself on LinkedIn as a robotics and self-driving technology consultant.