Dentures, Squishmallows, and Robotaxis: Uber’s Lost & Found reveals the scale of its AV rollout
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The Anthropological Record of the Driverless Ride
For a decade, Uber’s annual Lost & Found Index has served as a strange, digitized archaeological record of urban transit. The list usually reads like a fever dream of modern city life: live fish, ankle monitors, and the occasional single Louboutin shoe. But this year, the report introduces a new variable into the equation: the absence of a human driver.
Uber revealed on Tuesday that thousands of items have now been left behind in robotaxis across its network. While the volume hasn’t yet reached the millions seen in its human-driven fleet, the variety is already peak internet culture. Recent recoveries include an “I Heart Hot Dads” bag, a blue hat labeled “Emotional Support Human,” a set of dentures, and a Charli XCX poster.
On the surface, it is a quirky human-interest story. But for those tracking the autonomous vehicle (AV) race, these forgotten trinkets are a proxy metric for adoption. The fact that thousands of items are being recovered in such a short window suggests that robotaxi utilization is scaling faster than many realize.
Solving the ‘Last Mile’ of Lost Property
The logistical challenge of a lost item in a traditional Uber is straightforward: the rider contacts the driver. In a robotaxi, that feedback loop is broken. There is no one in the front seat to say, “Hey, you forgot your wallet.”
To bridge this gap, Uber is leaning on its established support infrastructure and its rebranded Uber Courier service. When a rider realizes they’ve left something in an AV, the process remains consistent with the rest of the app: a request via the activity tab leading to a support agent. Once located, the rider can either visit an AV depot—the physical hubs where vehicles are stored and serviced—or pay $15 for a Courier driver to deliver the item to their door.
“With tens of millions of lost items reported on Uber each year, we’ve spent the last decade building systems that help riders quickly and seamlessly reunite with their belongings,” Amy Satrom, global head of autonomous support at Uber, said in a statement. Satrom emphasizes that the goal is to combine fleet operations and hybrid networks to make the recovery process “simple, even when there’s no driver behind the wheel.”
The Strategy Behind Uber Autonomous Solutions
The integration of lost-and-found logistics is a small but critical piece of a much larger corporate pivot. In February, the company launched Uber Autonomous Solutions, a dedicated division designed to act as the operational backbone for any company deploying driverless tech. This isn’t just about passengers; it’s a suite of services catering to self-driving trucks and sidewalk delivery robots.
Uber is positioning itself not necessarily as the primary builder of AV hardware, but as the world’s most efficient orchestrator of AV trips. This strategy became tangible in March 2025 with the launch of “Waymo on Uber” in Austin, Texas. Since then, the partnership has expanded into Atlanta. Other integrations, such as Motional in Las Vegas and Avride in Dallas, are currently utilizing human safety operators, but they represent the pipeline for a fully autonomous future.
Scaling the Network
Uber’s ambitions are aggressive. The company intends to expand robotaxi offerings to as many as 15 cities globally by the end of the year, with a stated goal of becoming the largest facilitator of AV trips worldwide by 2029.
As the network grows, the Lost & Found Index will likely evolve from a quirky list of oddities into a serious operational benchmark. The ability to manage the “messy” human side of transit—like recovering a 15-pound yo-yo or a Squishmallow from a sterile, driverless pod—is exactly the kind of friction-reduction that will determine whether robotaxis move from a novelty to a utility.
