Baidu’s Apollo Platform: The Android of Autonomous Driving?
Baidu’s Apollo platform, named after the U.S. lunar mission, is designed to be an open and collaborative ecosystem for developing autonomous driving technologies. Baidu claims it boasts one of the largest partner ecosystems in the world, with over 50 partners, including major Chinese carmakers like FAW Group, Chery, Changan, and Great Wall Motors, as well as international giants like Bosch, Continental, Nvidia, Microsoft Cloud, Velodyne, TomTom, UCAR, and Grab Taxi.
The platform offers developers access to crucial resources, including data, APIs, open-source code, and even reference hardware, to accelerate their development of autonomous driving products. The platform is already proving its capabilities, with AutonomouStuff, a U.S. autonomous system supplier, successfully transforming two vehicles into self-driving models using Apollo’s 1.0 software release in just three days.
Baidu’s approach, which aims to be more open and collaborative than competing platforms, is based on the idea that the data and services generated from widespread adoption of Apollo will be extremely valuable. The company is hoping to eventually offer a platform capable of handling full autonomous driving on both urban roads and highways by the end of 2020.
