Baidu, the search giant that is all too often referred to as "the Chinese Google," is working with BMW to produce a prototype self-driving car. Exact details are scant, but it sounds like the car will be based on BMW's (semi) autonomous driving technology, backed up with Baidu's knowledge of Chinese roads. The car will hit the streets of China "before the year is out."
BMW and Baidu originally announced a partnership back in 2014, to develop a semi-autonomous vehicle within three years. This new update comes from The Guardian, reporting on Baidu's Jing Wang speaking at a cloud computing summit in China. Sadly we don't have a transcript of the speech, but according to The Guardian, "the prototype car will be used to test road-readiness of Baidu’s technology, which will involve the car driving itself but still have human controls."
While it might seem like a parallel universe episode of Fringe, Baidu really is in a similar situation to Google: it has a majority share of the search market (in China), a maps product, and a lot of R&D investment into deep learning, computer vision, and other A.I.-related areas. Much in the same way that Google is looking around for the next big thing after search, Baidu has its fingers in many different pies, including self-driving vehicles.
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