Baidu
The market for autonomous vehicle management is becoming more players. Companies that are engaged in the creation of robotic vehicles, both hardware and software for such vehicles, are already calculated in dozens. Among them there are Chinese developers. Now a techno giant from China – the Baidu corporation – has declared about himself.
She announced her own platform for robotic cars, which Baidu made open. The initiative was called Project Apollo. According to the company’s management, the project combines both hardware and software elements. To its partners, Baidu is ready to provide solutions that allow vehicles to detect obstacles, avoid them, plan the route in accordance with various factors.
So far this is only an announcement, access to Project Apollo will be available starting from July. At first the platform will be tested on cars that do not leave the test ranges. A little later this year Project Apollo will be tested on ordinary public roads. According to representatives of the Chinese company, the purpose of this project is the creation of a fully autonomous car. Employees of Baidu do not see anything impossible in that, by 2020, robotic cars have become a mass phenomenon on the roads for various purposes.
Now the Chinese company is trying to position itself as the leading leader in the industry of robotic vehicles. Thus, Baidu plans to launch its own autonomous vehicle already in 2018, seeking to bypass Google on this field. Now the company’s management gathers famous engineers and managers from all over the world, especially from the Silicon Valley.
Big hopes Baidu believes in artificial intelligence, which the company will try to make a leading element in Project Apoolo. Baidu invested heavily in the development of AI (its weak form) over the past few years. However, recently the head of the AI-unit Baidu resigned from his post, so this somewhat confused the cards to the Chinese.
Earlier the company cooperated with several foreign partners, including BMW. But in 2016 the partnership broke up due to the difference in views on the general directions of development.
Now Baidu will work actively on Project Apollo, trying to involve the maximum number of participants in the project. This is done in order to get the “best vehicles, sensors and other components” compatible with Project Apollo at the end.
