China's autonomous driving ushers in a new breakthrough: CCTV live broadcast of Baidu World 2020 to experience fully unmanned driving

China's autonomous driving has ushered in a new breakthrough, and the era of driverless driving has arrived. On September 15, Baidu teamed up with CCTV News to live broadcast the "Intelligent Everything - Baidu World 2020" conference. As the first link of the conference, CCTV News anchor Bao Xiaofeng and Baidu Group Vice President and General Manager of Intelligent Driving Business Group Li Zhenyu experienced the fully driverless Robotaxi at the Beijing Shougang Park, where the "2022 Winter Olympics Organizing Committee" is located. Apollo has achieved a new technological leap with mature driverless driving and 5G parallel driving. Fully driverless driving is the result of Baidu Apollo's 7 years of research and development. Its technology landing is a necessary condition for Robotaxi to achieve a commercial closed loop, which will accelerate the large-scale commercial deployment of autonomous driving in China. Fully driverless driving is another milestone for Apollo, and it is also an exciting moment for the global autonomous driving industry.

The commercialization of Apollo driverless driving is accelerating. During the live broadcast, Li Zhenyu introduced in detail the three major elements of fully driverless driving: "pre-installed mass-produced vehicles", "AI veteran drivers", and "5G cloud driving". These three elements are also the highest standards and thresholds of the global autonomous driving industry. Baidu has leading pre-installed mass-produced vehicles. The Hongqi EV Robotaxi, which rolled off the production line in 2019, has been running in Beijing, Changsha, Guangzhou, Chongqing, and Cangzhou, and has started fully driverless driving tests in some areas. On the same day, Changsha City officially issued an unmanned driving open road test license to Hunan Apollo Zhixing Company, and Apollo officially started unmanned driving tests on open social roads. Compared with modified autonomous driving vehicles, pre-installed mass-produced vehicles greatly guarantee the consistency, safety and stability of the vehicle.

At the same time, Apollo has newly released the fifth-generation autonomous driving kit. Li Zhenyu revealed that the first pre-installed mass-produced vehicle equipped with the fifth-generation autonomous driving kit that can meet the needs of fully unmanned operations will be launched soon, and proposed that the cost of each new generation of Apollo vehicles will be reduced by half and the capability can be increased tenfold. During the live broadcast, CCTV news reporters also visited the birthplace of Hongqi EV in Changchun, where Baidu and FAW Hongqi built China's first L4 passenger car pre-installed production line. Xu Liuping, Chairman and Party Secretary of China First Automobile Group Co., Ltd., said via video link: "FAW and Baidu will carry out more extensive and in-depth strategic cooperation in the fields of autonomous driving, artificial intelligence, digitalization, etc., jointly lead China's autonomous driving technology to the forefront of the world, and jointly provide consumers with the ultimate intelligent products and services."

"AI veteran driver" refers to the ability of unmanned driving. Since the launch of autonomous driving research and development, Apollo has traveled more than 6 million kilometers on the road, and has always maintained a zero accident rate. It has more safe driving experience than human veteran drivers and can cope with various technical challenges of unmanned driving. During the live broadcast, Bao Xiaofeng was obviously surprised that the driver was unmanned. After experiencing it for a while, she praised the "AI veteran driver" for his sophistication, which made her feel at ease. After a total of 100,000 safe passenger trips in 27 cities around the world, the "AI veteran driver" is smart enough to solve most problems. The remaining few extreme and special edge scenarios will be solved by "5G cloud driver".

Apollo's debut of "5G Cloud Driver" was a highlight of the live broadcast that day. "5G Cloud Driver" is an important supporting service for driverless cars. Based on new infrastructure such as 5G, smart transportation, and V2X, it can fill in for driverless systems. For example, in the face of temporary road changes or traffic control, after receiving a request for help, "5G Cloud Driver" can take over the driverless car and switch to parallel driving to help the vehicle solve the problem. Because "AI veteran drivers" can already handle most road conditions, extreme scenarios do not occur often, so unlike ordinary safety officers, cloud drivers can serve many cars by themselves. The cloud driver of "5G Cloud Driver" has become a new profession in the AI ​​era.

Bao Xiaofeng and Li Zhenyu encountered temporary traffic control in Shougang Park and needed to ask for help from "5G Cloud Driver". Bao Xiaofeng tried to click the button on the screen of the back seat of Robotaxi, and the help message was displayed on the screen of a "5G Cloud Driver Control Cabin" in the main studio of CCTV. Next to CCTV news anchor Kang Hui and Baidu founder, chairman and CEO Robin Li, a handsome cloud driver demonstrated the whole process from receiving the request to assisting in getting out of trouble. This set of equipment is similar to the popular racing game equipment on the market and is very cool. Through the high-bandwidth, low-latency 5G network, the cloud driver observes the 360° situation around the car from the screen group, and drives the vehicle using controllers such as the steering wheel, gear lever, and pedals until it is out of trouble and remotely restarts the unmanned driving system "AI Old Driver", allowing the vehicle to drive smoothly again in an unmanned state. The cloud drivers of "5G Cloud Driver" are safe, reliable, and well-trained. The cloud driving training has been more than 1,000 hours without accidents, which can ensure the absolute safety of passengers in the car and pedestrians outside the car in the non-automatic driving state. Li Yanhong believes that driverless cars will give rise to a new form of shared travel, and the autonomous driving car industry will enter a full commercialization stage in 2025.

At the Shougang Park, Li Zhenyu also took Bao Xiaofeng to experience the car space in the driverless era - Apollo's future cockpit. In this space without a steering wheel, but with a starry sky ceiling, a large sofa, and a large LCD TV, passengers can sit comfortably on the sofa and watch movies, sing KTV, etc. completely with intelligent voice remote control.

The theme of Baidu World 2020 is "Intelligent Everything". Intelligent driving and intelligent transportation are already changing people's travel lives. Baidu Apollo's technology and business route is simply called "climbing Mount Everest and laying eggs along the way". While autonomous driving technology is moving towards unmanned driving, Apollo's commercialization has also taken the lead in China.

Apollo ranks first in China in the commercial mass production of smart car networking and smart driving. WM Motor's new model equipped with Baidu Apollo's autonomous parking solution will be on sale in early 2021. This is China's first model equipped with L4 autonomous parking function. It can find parking spaces across multiple basements, and park and summon customers with one click, so that car owners don't have to worry about not being able to remember parking spaces, parking difficulties or being stuck at the basement door. The Apollo Xiaodu car with intelligent voice interaction function has become the choice of millions of smart cars. Xiaodu Car has cooperated with more than 60 mainstream car brands in the world, and has more than 500 models on the market. According to the "China Intelligent Connected Market Development Trend Report" recently released by IHS Markit, in 2020, Xiaodu Car has been ranked first in the world in the field of intelligent connected vehicles.

Apollo's intelligent transportation solution "ACE Traffic Engine" has been implemented in nearly 20 cities across the country, becoming the number one player in the new infrastructure of intelligent transportation. Robin Li predicts that within five years, China's first-tier cities will no longer need purchase and travel restrictions, relying on improved traffic efficiency. Within 10 years, the congestion problem can basically be solved. According to calculations, the construction of intelligent transportation infrastructure based on vehicle-road collaboration will be able to improve traffic efficiency by 15% - 30%, thereby contributing an absolute growth of 2.4% - 4.8% to GDP. This made Kang Hui sigh that the entire industrial chain and supply chain of economic development will undergo great changes.

In addition, at the Baidu World 2020 Autonomous Driving, Intelligent Transportation, and Intelligent Vehicle Connection Forum held on the same day, several major business platforms have upgraded their new product solutions. Apollo Autonomous Driving Open Platform 6.0 arrived as scheduled, open sourced unmanned capabilities, and added multiple cloud services to make it easier for developers to use. Apollo Intelligent Transportation released two major product systems, road test AI perception and cloud open platform, to achieve full connectivity between vehicle-road cloud maps and build a complete vehicle-road intelligent driving base. In terms of Apollo intelligent vehicle connection, Xiaodu Car 2021 also released and upgraded five new digital bases, thinking about the car as a whole with the concept of cockpit, and extending cars of different grades and functions with smart cockpits. Today, the Apollo open platform has open sourced 600,000 lines of code, bringing together 45,000 developers and 210 ecological partners around the world.

Under the guidance of major development strategies such as building a strong transportation nation and new infrastructure, Baidu Apollo will be supported by three major businesses: autonomous driving, smart vehicle networking, and smart transportation. It will fully empower the intelligent transformation of the automotive and transportation industries, lead the evolution and upgrade of China's intelligent networking, and stand at the forefront of the world.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.