Chinese search giant Baidu wants to build the ‘Android’ of autonomous vehicles

You may or may not be familiar with Chinese search giant Baidu but you might be hearing more from them in the future as they partnered with 50 companies to help develop their self-driving car platform. Some of the big names in the auto and tech industries have joined them, including Ford, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Intel. Baidu wants its Apollo platform to turn into a global program that can compete against the likes of Alphabet’s Waymo and Uber’s own autonomous vehicle. This even puts them up against the likes of its partner Ford’s own self-driving initiative.

Baidu wants to position Apollo as an open source software platform, though. Thus, drawing the comparison with Android. So that hardware and car makers can quickly deploy and customize the system. “It is in essence the ‘Android’ of the autonomous driving industry but more open and more powerful,” said Qi Lu, Baidu’s chief operating officer, at Baidu Create, the company’s inaugural artificial intelligence conference. “Apollo is not solely Baidu’s. It belongs to everyone in the ecosystem. And as we and our partners contribute to the platform in our areas of specialty, we all gain more, with the results far greater than just our own.”

Source: The Verge

Leaked image shows the Lumia smartphone that could have been

Microsoft has dropped out of the mobile hardware space with its Lumia 550, 650, 950 and 950 XL as the last models a few years ago. A leaked image of a Lumia prototype gives us a glimpse of where Microsoft was headed. Outfitted with a Snapdragon 820 processor, 23 megapixel camera and an aluminium unibody the prototype, outed on Baidu, shows a departure from the Lumia design playbook.

Word has it that Microsoft hasn't given up on its own mobile devices, specially now that the Surface brand is gaining ground in notebooks and tablets, it may be a good time to introduce a new Windows 10 smartphone.

Source: WindowsCentral

Baidu brings autonomous driving unit to Silicon Valley

Heading right into Google’s turf, Baidu is forming a self-driving car team in Silicon Valley. This unit will focus on research, development, and testing of its own autonomous vehicle. Baidu is calling its Autonomous Driving Unit in Silicon Valley as ADU-US. The team, which they plan to grow to over 100 researchers and engineers by the end of 2016, will tackle things like planning, perception, control, and systems. They’ll take an “incremental approach,” starting with small “autonomy-enabled” regions and then design cars that will recognizable, like what we get from Google’s own fleet.

ADU-US will be working alongside Baidu’s Research team and they’re looking to have machine learning researchers with knowledge in both hardware and software, ranging from robotics and computer vision to onboard computers and sensors. They are looking for people with experience in the automotive industry as well.

Source: Market Wired