For the past decade, Uber’s annual Lost & Found Index has functioned as an unintentional cultural time capsule, cataloging millions of forgotten items that range from the tediously predictable to the genuinely bewildering. Smartphones, laptops, and wallets appear year after year alongside live fish, ankle monitors, toboggans, and a single Louboutin shoe. But in 2025, the index introduced a novel variable that shifts both the logistical and commercial dimensions of lost property: the robotaxi. This year, for the first time, Uber is reporting thousands of items left behind in autonomous vehicles operating on its network, and the list is already serving up its own brand of anthropological curiosity.
Among the usual suspects — phones, keys, wallets, passports, and headphones — Uber’s robotaxi lost-and-found data turned up a set of dentures, an “I Heart Hot Dads” bag, and a blue hat reading “Emotional Support Human.” There was a 15-pound yo-yo, a large black marble duck, a Squishmallow plush, and a Charli XCX poster. The collection is small compared with the millions of items logged across Uber’s broader ride-hailing operation, but it is already revealing something significant: robotaxis are being used at scale, and the infrastructure for handling the inevitable human forgetfulness is being built alongside the technology itself.
Robotaxis Generate Their Own Lost-and-Found Economy
Uber’s decision to spotlight robotaxi-specific lost items is not merely a marketing exercise. It underscores a practical reality that becomes more pressing as autonomous rides multiply: even when there is no driver behind the wheel, passengers still leave things behind, and someone still has to return them. The company said Tuesday that thousands of items have been reported lost in robotaxis on its network in the past 12 months, a figure that offers a rough but telling proxy for how many autonomous trips have been completed through the Uber app since the commercial push began in earnest.
The timing is no coincidence. Uber spent years forging partnerships with autonomous vehicle technology companies, but the commercial wheels did not fully engage until March 2025, when the “Waymo on Uber” robotaxi service launched in Austin. That rollout was followed by a similar expansion into Atlanta. Uber has since added other AV partners, including Motional in Las Vegas and Avride in Dallas, though those services still operate with human safety drivers behind the wheel. The accumulation of lost items across these deployments provides a ground-level signal: robotaxis are no longer a pilot project — they are a consumer service generating real trip volume.
How Riders Recover Items Left in a Driverless Vehicle
The process for retrieving a forgotten item from a robotaxi is designed to mirror the standard Uber experience as closely as possible. A rider opens the app, navigates to the activity tab, selects the trip in question, and contacts customer support. From there, a support agent can message, chat, or speak with the rider by phone. If the item is located, the rider has two options: pay $15 for an Uber Courier driver to deliver the item locally on the same day, or arrange an in-person pickup at an autonomous vehicle depot, where the robotaxis are stored and serviced.
Uber Courier is a rebranding of Uber Connect, a service launched in 2020 that allowed users to send packages between local addresses. Repurposing this existing infrastructure for robotaxi lost-and-found is a logical and cost-effective move, but the company emphasizes that its approach goes beyond simply relabeling an old product. The broader support system includes dedicated fleet operations teams, specialized support agents, and a hybrid network designed to handle the unique logistics of retrieving items from vehicles that may be dispatched, repositioning, or charging autonomously at any given moment.
What is Uber Autonomous Solutions?
In February 2025, Uber announced the formation of a new business division called Uber Autonomous Solutions. This unit consolidates the company’s ambitions around driverless technology and provides a suite of services for companies operating robotaxis, self-driving trucks, and sidewalk delivery robots. The offering includes software platforms, operational support, and a range of back-end services that handle the tasks an AV company would otherwise need to build from scratch — including lost-item recovery protocols. The division signals that Uber intends to be more than a ride-hailing app that happens to list robotaxis; it wants to be the operating system for autonomous mobility at scale.
Amy Satrom, Uber’s global head of autonomous support, said in a statement that the company has spent the past decade building systems to help riders reunite with their belongings, and that same expertise is now being applied to autonomous vehicles. “Combining our fleet operations, support teams, and hybrid network,” she said, the goal is to make getting a lost item back simple, even when there is no driver behind the wheel.
Why Lost Items Matter for Autonomous Vehicle Adoption
On its face, the lost-and-found problem in robotaxis might seem like a minor operational footnote. But it touches on a deeper challenge that every autonomous vehicle operator must solve: trust. Passengers who are already adapting to the experience of riding in a car with no driver need reassurance that the support systems they relied on in human-driven rides — including the ability to recover a forgotten phone or wallet — are not only preserved but improved. A lost item that cannot be retrieved quickly erodes confidence in the entire service. Uber’s ability to handle this efficiently, even at low volumes, is a necessary condition for scaling robotaxi ridership to the levels the company has projected.
Uber has said it plans to offer robotaxi rides through its app in as many as 15 cities globally by the end of 2026 and has declared its intention to become the largest facilitator of autonomous vehicle trips in the world by 2029. Those ambitions depend on more than technology partnerships and regulatory approvals. They depend on the mundane, unglamorous work of customer service logistics — the kind of work that becomes visible only when someone leaves a Squishmallow in a back seat and needs it back by dinner.
The Broader Strategic Picture
Uber’s lost-and-found index has always been a quirky marketing tool, but the robotaxi edition carries a more strategic subtext. By publicly counting and categorizing items left in autonomous vehicles, Uber is sending a signal to riders, regulators, investors, and AV partners alike: the network is live, it is operating at scale, and the operational infrastructure that made Uber indispensable for human-driven rides is being systematically replicated for a driverless future. The dentures, the hot dads bag, and the emotional support human hat are not just curiosities — they are evidence that robotaxis have crossed a threshold from novelty to normalcy, and that Uber intends to be the company that manages the transition, one forgotten item at a time.
