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

Kangaroos are confusing Volvo’s self-driving cars

Volvo seems to have run into trouble with a certain marsupial as they test their self-driving cars in Australia. The car maker has discovered that kangaroos are both a nuisance and a source of confusion for its self-driving vehicles. This isn’t the first time Volvo’s detection system has been exposed to large animals. In Sweden, it’s responded to deer, caribou, and elk. But the unusual pattern that kangaroos move seems to have thrown these machines into a loop.

“When it’s in the air it actually looks like it’s further away, then it lands and it looks closer,” Volvo Australia’s Technical Manager David Pickett explains to ABC. Kangaroos aren’t just wreaking havoc with Volvo’s cars, these marsupials have been the cause of vehicle collisions in Australia. But it’s a good thing that this was detected early on to avoid any catastrophic run-ins with the creature somewhere down the line. But it does seem to delay Volvo’s plans a bit. Or at least make things a bit more challenging as they aim to sell autonomous driving vehicles by 2021.

Source: Engadget + The Verge

Alphabet’s Waymo in talks with Honda regarding self-driving car tech

After Google recently spun out its self-driving car division into Waymo, it looks like the new Alphabet company is trying to strike a big deal. Honda announced it is entering talks with Waymo on integrating autonomous vehicle tech into its cars. The discussion is still in its very early stages but Honda is proposing to give Waymo modified vehicles to help speed the process along. The new announcement isn’t meant to derail Honda’s own automated driving plans, which it intends to have self-driving cars on the road by 2020, but will be considered a “different technological approach.” If it does push through though, this would help legitimize Waymo further as a viable option for manufacturers who just plan to integrate an established self-driving platform over creating their own version.

Source: Engadget

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