- Event livestream demonstrates Fully Automated Driving
without a safety driver
- Pre-installed and mass-produced vehicles, "experienced AI
driver", and 5G Remote Driving Service are the three core
components of Fully Automated Driving
- Apollo announces various updates including a car model by
Weltmeister equipped with Apollo's L4 autonomous valet parking
technology
BEIJING, Sept. 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Baidu, Inc.
(NASDAQ: BIDU) today displayed Fully Automated Driving during Baidu
World 2020, the company's annual technology conference that was
held in cooperation with CCTV. With Apollo's new Fully Automated
Driving capability, the AI system can independently drive without a
safety driver inside the vehicle, a breakthrough that will
accelerate the large-scale deployment of autonomous driving
technology across China.
Zhenyu Li, Corporate Vice President
of Baidu and General Manager of Intelligent Driving Group (IDG),
demonstrated the technology in Beijing's Shougang Park with CCTV anchor
Xiaofeng Bao.
"The three core components of Apollo's Fully Automated Driving
technology are pre-installed and mass-produced vehicles, the
'experienced AI driver', and the 5G Remote Driving Service," said
Zhenyu Li during the demonstration.
With pre-installed and mass-produced vehicles as the foundation,
the AI driving system is now capable of operating the vehicles
independently, and the 5G Remote Driving Service allows remote
human operators to intervene in case of emergencies.
Apollo's leading technology in pre-installed and mass-produced
vehicles is a key precondition for Fully Automated Driving. In
2019, Baidu partnered with FAW Group and jointly developed Hongqi
EV robotaxi, the first pre-installed and mass-produced robotaxi in
China, which has since been
deployed in unmanned driving tests in multiple cities including
Beijing, Changsha, Guangzhou, Chongqing, and Cangzhou. Compared with
modified models, pre-installed and mass-produced vehicles better
guarantee consistency and safety.
Apollo has also released its fifth-generation autonomous driving
kit, and the first pre-installed and mass-produced vehicles that
meet the requirements for fully automated operations will be
launched soon. With each new generation of Apollo vehicles, the
cost will be halved while performance will increase by tenfold,
said Zhenyu Li.
The "experienced AI driver" refers to the capacity of the AI
system to control the vehicle independent of a human driver. Apollo
has completed over six million kilometers of road testing with a
record low of zero accidents. Having carried over 100,000
passengers across 27 cities around the world, Apollo's "experienced
AI driver" is well-trained. It is capable of handling various
technological challenges of unmanned driving and solving the
overwhelming majority of possible issues on the road.
The 5G Remote Driving Service is an indispensable complement to
the "experienced AI driver" and allows human operators to remotely
access vehicles in the case of exceptional emergencies. Powered by
smart transportation systems, vehicle-to-everything (V2X)
technologies, and the high bandwidth and response speed of 5G
networks, the 5G Remote Driving Service is engaged instantaneously
to provide immediate assistance from remote human operators when
the user or the system switches to parallel driving mode. All
remote human operators have completed over 1,000 hours of
cloud-based driving training without any accidents, so they can
ensure the safety of passengers and pedestrians under the
non-autonomous driving mode. As the "experienced AI driver"
can handle most road conditions, extreme occasions which require
human intervention are rare. Hence, one remote human operator will
be able to manage multiple vehicles simultaneously, largely
increasing efficiency compared to the traditional one operator per
vehicle model.
With these advancements, unmanned driving will create a new
ecosystem of shared transportation, and the autonomous driving
industry will enter the stage of full commercialization in 2025,
said Robin Li, Co-founder, Chairman
and CEO of Baidu.
Apollo also announced new product and technological developments
at the conference. Vehicle manufacturer Weltmeister will launch a
new model incorporating Apollo's valet parking in 2021, which will
be the first in China to be
equipped with L4 autonomous valet parking technology. It will be
able to identify vacant parking slots in multistory parking
garages, and allow people to use the autonomous-parking and smart
summons functions with one simple click.
In addition, DuerOS for Apollo with smart voice-interaction has
been installed on over one million smart vehicles. DuerOS for
Apollo is partnering with over 60 major automotive brands and
covers more than 500 vehicle models on the market. According to IHS
Markit's latest "Report on Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV)
Development Trends in the Chinese Market", DuerOS for Apollo is the
world's most installed system for CAV.
The Apollo smart transportation solution "ACE Transportation
Engine" has been put in use in nearly 20 cities in China. Robin Li
estimates that by 2025 major Chinese cities will no longer need to
limit vehicle purchases and usage, and by 2030 most traffic
congestion issues can be solved by higher transportation
efficiency. Smart transportation infrastructure based on V2X
technologies promises to improve traffic efficiency by 15% to 30%
and boost the contribution to GDP by 2.4% to 4.8% in absolute
value.
During the smart transportation sub-forum at Baidu World
2020, Baidu launched Apollo 6.0, the latest version of its open
platform, adding multiple cloud services to make it more accessible
for developers. The Apollo open platform has now released 600,000
lines of open source code, gathering 45,000 developers and 210
ecosystem partners globally.
About Baidu
Baidu, Inc. is the leading Chinese language Internet search
provider. Baidu aims to make the complicated world simpler for
users and enterprises through technology. Baidu's ADSs trade on the
NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol "BIDU." Currently, ten
ADSs represent one Class A ordinary share.
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SOURCE Baidu, Inc.