China’s Baidu finishes building ‘world’s largest’ test ground for autonomous vehicle, smart driving

[beijingwalker]

Tech / Enterprises
China’s Baidu finishes building ‘world’s largest’ test ground for autonomous vehicle, smart driving systems

• Baidu says it has completed the world’s largest site to test both autonomous driving and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication
• The Apollo Park in Beijing is equipped with facilities to support the full autonomous vehicle development process from research to testing

Published: 5:30am, 28 May, 2020

Chinese search engine giant and artificial intelligence (AI) champion
Baidu
said on Tuesday that it has completed construction of what it claims to be the world’s largest testing ground for autonomous driving and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication.
The 13,500 square metre (145,300 sq ft) Apollo Park in Beijing’s Yizhuang Economic Development Zone houses more than 200 self-driving vehicles and is equipped with facilities to support the full autonomous vehicle development process from research to testing, Baidu said in a statement on Tuesday.

At the park, Baidu will be collecting and storing data from the daily operations of its fleet of Apollo self-driving cars and testing out controlling vehicles remotely via the cloud, it said.

Baidu said that it is also testing applications that support vehicle-to-infrastructure communication at Apollo Park. Such technologies, which are also being tested by other Chinese tech giants
such as Huawei
, can remotely connect vehicles with a variety of road traffic elements such as traffic lights, cameras and speed limit signs.

Autonomous cars are high on the development agenda for both the US and China, but the technology has been hard to perfect as navigating in busy, real-world environments is difficult.

Baidu started development of self-driving technologies in 2013. Its self-driving unit Apollo has tested autonomous driving cars in 24 cities around the world and completed more than 100,000 passenger trips, the company said.


In the past year or so, Baidu has been scaling up its self-driving ambitions, announcing plans to build testing grounds and pilot operation zones for autonomous vehicles in cities including
Chongqing
, Shanxi province’s Yangquan city, and Anhui province’s Hefei city.
Earlier this year, the Beijing-based company jumped into the top five among autonomous driving technology companies in Navigant Research’s annual survey for the first time, trailing only Google’s self-driving unit Waymo, Ford and Cruise.

However, it faces stiff competition in its home market too. Last month, competing Chinese self-driving start-up AutoX
launched an 80,000 sq ft “gigafactory”
in Shanghai, which it said was the largest data hub for self-driving car data in China and the biggest robotaxi operations centre in Asia.

Guangzhou-based Pony.ai, another leading Chinese autonomous driving company,
announced a partnership
with Japanese car giant Toyota last year on research and deployment for next-generation mobility services.

Both Pony.ai and Didi Chuxing, China’s largest ride-hailing platform, have
received approval
to operate self-driving cars in Jiading, with the
launch of the two companies’ fleets in Shanghai
expected to mark the first time robotaxis are deployed in Chinese cities on a large scale.

https://www.scmp.com/tech/enterpris...-finishes-building-worlds-largest-test-ground

 

[艹艹艹]

Baidu to Support BYD’s Smart Driving Business​

February 25, 2022

STAR Market Daily learned on Friday that Shenzhen-based electric vehicle firm BYD has chosen Baidu as its official smart driving business supplier. Under this arrangement, Baidu
will provide BYD with its Apollo Navigation Pilot (ANP), an autonomous driving assistance solution, and a human-machine co-driving map product. Baidu‘s Intelligent Driving Group has begun cooperation with BYD for technological development, and the mass production of joint models will reportedly be achieved soon.

Cooperation between BYD and Baidu can be traced back several years. In January, 2018, BYD announced that it would open its supply chain to car companies all over the world, and soon reached a supply cooperation relationship with Faurecia, Dongfeng Motor Group and Changan Automobile. The carmaker then opened its seats, power batteries, motors and electric controllers to all automakers. In March 2018, BYD opened its intelligent e-platform to global automobile developers.

At the BYD Global Developers Conference on September 5, 2018, BYD and Baidu
disclosed the latest progress of their cooperation. In terms of navigation technology, the Baidu Maps Auto Edition was planned to cover all BYD models. In terms of autonomous driving, Baidu would provide a complete solution for BYD’s Level 3 intelligent driving, and both parties planned to realize mass production of autonomous driving vehicles within three years. The first batch of open versions of BYD Qin Pro had been booked by Baidu
as Apollo test vehicles for demonstration road tests.

Baidu has heavily invested in fields of smart driving and autonomous driving. Robin Li, founder, Chairman and CEO of Baidu, previously pointed out that autonomous driving supported by car-road coordination is a technical route that Baidu insists on and is optimistic about. According to the company, the accident rate of autonomous driving can be reduced by as much as 99% through intelligent vehicle-road coordination.