Baidu goals to have world’s largest robotaxi service by 2023

After changing into the primary firm in China to be granted a allow to run a robotaxi service with out the necessity for a security driver in August, Baidu has now introduced an bold plan to have the service cowl a wider space than any rival as quickly as 2023.

Baidu, which is also known as China’s Google, made the announcement on Tuesday throughout a presentation on self-driving applied sciences the corporate has within the works. The corporate did not point out a selected dimension for the realm to be coated, however has beforehand mentioned it goals to have 600 robotaxis in operation by the top of 2022.

Baidu’s robotaxi service, referred to as Apollo Go, has been up and working in elements of China since 2021, and since then it has managed to ship 1.4 million rides. A 3rd of these occurred within the third quarter of 2022 alone.

Apollo Go at the moment operates in restricted areas inside 10 main Chinese language cities, together with in Chongqing and Wuhan the place the robotaxis function with out a security driver. Baidu claims they’ll add new cities to their service in simply 20 days, which is made attainable because of automation of map technology.

In accordance with Baidu, round 96% of map technology can now be automated, because of AI. The maps are additionally generated utilizing crowd-sourced knowledge from precise drivers, which is necessary for real-time updates.

“Baidu’s new technology autonomous driving map is supplied with complete capabilities similar to automated manufacturing, real-time fusion, and information enhancement,” Jizhou Huang, Baidu’s head of self-driving expertise, mentioned in a press release.

Moreover, Baidu mentioned it’s creating its self-driving system to deal with eventualities it has not encountered earlier than, identified within the trade because the “lengthy tail” downside. Baidu’s resolution is an AI system integrating a pre-trained visual-language mannequin with weak supervision, which can work together with a separate AI system in a position to acknowledge 1000’s of objects. In accordance with Baidu, the setup will allow a self-driving automotive to shortly make sense of an object not usually seen on the street, similar to plastic bag or stray animal.

Within the U.S., Alphabet’s Waymo is main the way in which with regards to the operation of a robotaxi service. Waymo’s service is restricted to elements of Phoenix and San Francisco, and the corporate in October mentioned the following location can be Los Angeles.