Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) is dedicated to developing safe, reliable self-driving transportation for everyone, everywhere. Uber ATG sought to update every conferencing space throughout its three-story headquarters to promote greater usability, as employees found the technology within them to be frustrating and difficult to fully utilize.

SOLUTION:

Garydavid Royce, Uber’s senior design engineer, and Joey Loeffler, vice president of San Antonio Sound & Light, understood any new AV implementations had to be optimized for each specific space to succeed, requiring multiple setups to accommodate both smaller huddle rooms and larger all-hands spaces.

For small and medium spaces, Loeffler utilized Biamp’s Devio solution for its superior sound and ability to send audio over USB to eMax Minis, the codec used within the platform; for larger rooms, he determined Biamp’s Tesira solution, in conjunction with Parle Beamtracking microphones, provided the necessary components for achieving the desired results.The guiding principle for the redesign was “invisible comfort,” a concept perfectly aligned with Biamp’s philosophy.

Both Royce and Loeffler wanted to ensure that conversations within these rooms felt natural for those in the room and on the other end of the line.

Thanks to ceiling installation, Biamp’s Parle microphones shift focus from the technology and toward what’s being said, where it belongs. The Beamtracking technology within these mics also delivers excellent audio, no matter where someone is positioned within the space.

CONCLUSION:

By utilizing Devio for small to medium size rooms and Tesira for larger spaces, Uber ATG was able to implement invisible comfort that allowed employees to stop struggling with technology and focus fully on the conversation at hand.

Devio’s all-in-one design, aimed at end users, allowed installers to calibrate the system, make precise adjustments to the microphones, and perform other configuration duties without relying on an integrator. “I think that magic was really in the Biamp Devio solution…Devio’s auto calibration just worked really, really well and gave us amazing quality,” said Loeffler.

Tesira, meanwhile, provided the audio and video capabilities to serve the greater demands of Uber ATG’S larger conference rooms and all-hands spaces. Conversations with the architecture team to ensure that proper acoustical treatments were in place also helped make the reconfigured conferencing spaces as conducive to communication as possible.