The Chinese government wants to further boost its smart city infrastructures leading to the ChongQing government having to tap right in with Baidu in order to create a testing ground for self driving cars.
The project is expected to cost as high as US$7.3 million which includes building road infrastructures with embedded sensors, traffic signal control systems as well as developing Edge computing and data storage capacities.
Baidu made it know on Thursday that all is already being put in place to ensure the realization of this futuristic ambition to make a smart city that will further enhance technological advancement within the country. When the project is done, there will be about 20-square kilometer open area in the Yongchuan district of the city which is expected to host a spontaneous test drives for over 100 Level 4 autonomous cars.
According to statistics, these level 4 autonomous vehicles are 5hose which are able to fully drive themselves without the requirement of human in any way at all so fully autonomous vehicle. Baidu made a deal to collaborate with the ChingQing municipal government back in August in an attempt to support the southwestern city’s transformation into a national hub for various smart city technologies.
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It’s been referred to as the Chinese tech city for quite a while considering the high level of traffic congestion and camera surveillance as well as other challenges for urban motorists which include hills and building extensions. The Yuzhong district is an example of such with a big 24-floor building without a lift with three exits that leads out onto three separate streets.
Also newsworthy that the city has also moved far ahead with the development of 5G, big data as well as AI technologies with an estimated investment totaling 2.7 trillion yuan expected to be made this year in areas which includes smart transportation and telecom.
High-tech countries such as the US and China are both focused on developing the autonomous vehicle technology so soon though the tech behind it has been quite been hard to come on off with tech giants such as Google, Tesla and others all investing big into this avenue.
Baidu’s tie-up in Chongqing comes amid news it has jumped into the top five autonomous driving technology companies in Navigant Research’s annual survey for the first time, trailing only Google’s self-driving unit Waymo, Ford and Cruise, according to the US publication. The Chinese search engine continues to push limits as it’s being labelled the leader while research companies such as Navigant puts others like Toyota, Hyundai’s partnership with Aptiv and Volkswagen Group as contenders. Tesla was ranked as a challenger based on this survey.
Baidu outranked Waymo based on Nasdaq in their latest test driving reports which was submitted to California’s State Department of Motor Vehicles. Unlike Waymo, Baidu recorded human intervention in its autonomous cars only once every 18,000 miles, compared with Waymo’s once every 13,000 miles.
