Baidu lends AI expertise to parties

Source: Xinhua | 2017-04-20

CHINESE artificial intelligence giant Baidu decided yesterday to share an open software platform with its partners in the automotive and autonomous driving industry to help upgrade the sector.

Through the Apollo project, Baidu will build a collaborative ecosystem using its strength in AI technology to work with other companies to promote the development and popularization of autonomous driving technology.

The Apollo project provides platforms for vehicles, hardware, software and cloud data services, and Baidu will share resources and capabilities in obstacle perception, trajectory planning, vehicle control, operating systems and other functions, as well as a complete set of testing tools.

Baidu will first introduce its autonomous driving technology in restricted environments in July, then expand to cars running autonomously on simple urban road conditions toward the end of the year. It will gradually introduce fully autonomous driving capabilities on highways and open city roads by 2020.