Chinese internet Juggernaut Baidu is making huge improvements in the autonomous driving industry which has become heated over the last decade. Billions of dollars have been poured into this industry fighting for a piece of a growing autonomous driving market.
Baidu has been investing heavily in this market as they want to become one of the main players within this market in China. Recently, they have rolled out their robotaxi service which started in August 2022.
Prompting them to extend the hours the fleet of autonomous will be available for service. For example, in Wuhan, China currently the hours that these vehicles can be available range from 7 am to 11 pm without safety drivers around the wheel.
Prior it was from 9 am to 5 pm in the city, this extension of time showed that the company has confidence in the technology and what its capable of.
Baidu’s autonomous vehicle technology is made of a mix of third-party cameras, radar, and lidar to help its cars see better in low-visibility conditions.
Another key technology that is important comes from the area of artificial intelligence. They have developed a visual language model that is able to identify rare objects which is quite helpful in situations where they might be an anomaly in the road that might cause an accident.
The autonomous space within China has been getting support from key figures within China. Wuhan is an industrial hub within Central China, the fact that these vehicles have been able to perform in such an environment is a testament to its ingenuity.
