Lyft and educational online course provider Udacity have teamed up to provide learning opportunities in self-driving car program to a diverse pool of individuals in the United States through scholarships that will be offered to 400 participants. The ride-sharing service announced on Tuesday that the scholarship program will run over the next year as part of Udacity’s “Intro to Self-Driving Cars” Nanodegree program that is intended for the underserved communities in the country as far as technology is concerned. According to Lyft, the long-term goal of the program is to help enhance the transportation system for everyone, noting how ride-sharing is created for all.
The scholarship program is open to everyone with varying degrees of experience who currently live in the US Application for the scholarship slots formally opened on Tuesday and will close on October 1, with the program awardees set to be unveiled on October 5. Lyft notes that the scholarships will be granted in the fall of 2018, in case you were wondering. The program course is designed to cover several topics related to self-driving, including machine learning, object-oriented programming and probabilistic robotics. On top of the scholarship programs, Lyft and Udacity will also offer mentorship opportunities to students in the United States through the San Francisco, California-based company’s Level 5 Engineering Center, which houses its business unit dedicated to the development of self-driving solutions. Additionally, graduates of Udacity’s degree programs will be able to gain access to a wide variety of career opportunities.
Lyft’s partnership with Udacity is just one of the many initiatives launched by the ride-sharing service provider as a part of a broader objective to advance its self-driving push. In May of this year, Lyft and Waymo reportedly inked a collaborative agreement to jointly develop self-driving cars with the goal of improving the state of transportation in cities across the world. Then most recently, it was reported that Alphabet was planning to invest about $1 billion in Lyft through either its subsidiary Google or private equity division CapitalG after the two companies allegedly held discussions a few weeks prior, though nothing is confirmed regarding the matter as of now.