Baidu Announces Opening of Autopilot Platform, Automotive Industry Welcomes Change Opportunity

【Global Science and Technology Report】On April 19, Baidu released a new program called "Apollo", which will provide partners in the automotive industry and autonomous driving an open, complete, and secure software platform to help them integrate vehicles. And hardware systems, quickly build a complete set of their own automated driving system.

Lu Qi, president and chief operating officer of Baidu Group, said that artificial intelligence technology has great potential in promoting social development, and smart cars are one of the largest industrial opportunities. This time, Baidu will open its own strongest, most mature and safest autopilot technology to the industry, aiming to establish an ecosystem centered on cooperation and leverage Baidu’s technological superiority in the field of artificial intelligence to cooperate. Partners empower and jointly promote the development and popularity of autonomous driving technology. The plan named "Apollo" is to borrow the Apollo moon plan, which means that it is groundbreaking, but it also requires the gathering of the power of many participants and super engineering that can bring tremendous impetus to social development. Baidu believes that autonomous driving and smart cars are also such businesses.

It is reported that Baidu's upcoming Apollo project provides a complete set of software, hardware and service solutions, including four major parts: vehicle platform, hardware platform, software platform, and cloud data service. Baidu will open up code or capabilities of environmental awareness, path planning, vehicle control, vehicle operating systems, and other functions, and provide complete development and testing tools. Baidu will also choose partners with the best cooperation and compatibility in the fields of vehicles and sensors to jointly form a collaboration alliance and recommend them to project participants to further reduce the R&D thresholds of unmanned vehicles and promote the rapid popularization of technology.

According to Baidu's introduction, in July of this year, it will take the lead in opening the auto-driving capacity of closed venues. At the end of the year, it will output the ability to drive autonomously under simple urban conditions. By 2020, it will gradually open up to fully automatic driving on highways and ordinary city roads. Baidu began to invest heavily in research and development of unmanned vehicle technology since 2015. In December of that year, it conducted full-automatic driving test of expressways and urban roads in Beijing. In September 2016, it obtained the road test license for automatic driving in California, and in November in Zhejiang. Wuzhen carried out trial operation of unmanned vehicles on ordinary open roads. Hundreds of guests and journalists who participated in the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen took the Baidu unmanned vehicle.

At present, technology giants including Baidu, Google, Tesla and Apple have all made sustained investments in the field of automated driving and achieved remarkable results. Ford, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and other big car manufacturers have already started The autopilot technology is applied to their own cars. However, most of the technology giants or large car companies have independently carried out R&D of unmanned vehicles. Unmanned vehicle technology leading companies such as Baidu have opened up their own technologies and platforms and shared capabilities with industry partners. This is the first time in the world.

Lu Qi said that "China, as the world's largest automotive production and sales market, has a large number of automotive brands and a more open cooperation environment. Baidu's initiative in opening up autonomous driving technology will collide with the automotive industry and create a lot of opportunities for innovation. Unleashing the value accumulated by our technology and driving rapid change in the industry. Looking at the United States and other more developed automotive industries, Baidu's open and innovative industry ecosystem will also promote the acceleration of autonomous driving." “Furthermore, through the opening of technology, our technical achievements can also be quickly applied in a wide range of fields and can promote rapid iteration of the technology itself. This is very attractive to every individual who is interested in joining autopilot technology."

According to the plan released by Baidu, Chen Anning, general manager of Chery, said that the threshold for autonomous driving technology research and development is relatively high. From 0 to 1 is not a day's work, so the opening of the Baidu automatic driving platform is of great significance to the automotive industry. Chery Automobile Baidu’s move is very much welcomed. At the same time, we must also realize that the cooperation between auto companies and Internet technology companies in autopilot has a process that is getting better. The more data and technology are shared, the more prominent the innovation is, the greater the benefits to both parties, and the sooner they can The intelligent driving field establishes the competitive advantage of car companies. At present, our cooperation with Baidu in the field of automatic driving has entered a deep customization stage.

Li Bin, Founder and Chairman of Weilai Automobile, said that Baidu has a deep reserve of soft power in the field of automated driving. Baidu's ability to open artificial intelligence, big data, and maps needed for unmanned driving is of great significance to the driverless industry. . Coupled with the drop in hardware costs brought about by open platform integration, the popularity of unmanned vehicles may be much faster than most people imagine. In the future, the value chain of the auto industry will be remodeled, and the personalized experience will be a foundation and future development direction for the definition of auto brands.

People in the industry believe that Baidu’s announcement of sharing autopilot technology with the industry is obviously good news for many automakers in urgent need of restructuring. The high threshold for the development of automatic driving technology, and the realization of a technology path from automatic assisted driving to fully automated drone, require long-term large-scale capital and human input. In cooperation with technology leaders such as Baidu, you can quickly acquire the corresponding technical capabilities and achieve a multiplier effect. At the same time, Baidu adopts an open strategy to promote technological development and popularization with partners in a wide range of fields. It will also lay a solid foundation for maintaining its leading position in the industry and playing an important role in the automobile industry in the future.