Baidu to Open Source Its Autonomous Driving Technology
Baidu announced that it will soon release its open source autonomous driving technology. The company said that July 2017, it will open source its technology for the operation of autonomous cars : “open, complete and reliable software platform for its partners in the automotive and autonomous driving industry to develop their own autonomous driving systems”
Towards the end of 2017, the company plans to share its technology for autonomous cars running on simple urban road. By 2020, the company aims to share its fully autonomous driving technology for autonomous cars running on highways and open city roads.
The specific autonomous driving technologies that Baidu is planning to share to the public include vehicle
- Operating systems
- Obstacle perception
- Trajectory planning,
- Vehicle control
- Set of testing tools.
Qi Lu, Baidu group president and COO, said in a statement, “AI has great potential to drive social development, and one of AI’s biggest opportunities is intelligent vehicles.” The COO of Baidu added, “Baidu took the initiative to open our autonomous driving technology to the industry in order to encourage greater innovation and opportunities, making better use of our technology to drive the evolution of the entire industry.”
Qi Lu further said that China, being the world’s largest market for automotive sales and production, has many car brands and an open environment that is “ripe for collaboration.”
Baidu – China’s largest internet search engine company – started to invest in the research and development of self-driving car technology in 2015. In December 2015, the company conducted road tests for its fully autonomous cars on the highways and open city roads of Beijing.