The new solution, enabled by Baidu’s Apollo open autonomous driving platform, integrates smart vehicles and intelligent road infrastructure, laying the foundation for intelligent transportation of the future.
Baidu Inc. has announced it will launch the Apollo Intelligent Vehicle Infrastructure Cooperative Systems (IVICS) open-source solution by the end of 2018, leveraging its capabilities in autonomous driving to bring together intelligent vehicles and infrastructure to form a “human-vehicle-roadway” interplay – an important step toward developing future intelligent transportation.
“A future intelligent transportation system powered by Apollo IVICS will improve road safety, use of resources and management of traffic congestion issues at a cost much lower than the deployment of autonomous driving vehicles alone,” said Robin Li, chairman and CEO of Baidu.
Baidu says the new IVICS, supported by major technologies such as processing sensor fusion information for vehicle perception, roadside perception, data compression, communication optimization and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) terminal software and hardware and V2X safety, will create a synergistic interaction of smart cars and “intelligent roadways.” Since 2016, Baidu has been an early adopter in employing extensive research on IVICS, and has made significant progress in accumulating data from various test scenarios and miles driven. Now, Baidu will open up this system to complement the 120 core open AI capabilities of Baidu Brain and 126 partners from Apollo’s open autonomous driving platform, further underpinning Baidu’s key AI strategy of “open and empower.”
“The Apollo IVICS open-source solution marks a milestone in the development of Baidu’s open autonomous driving platform, as it signifies Apollo’s integral opening-up of both vehicles and road infrastructure,” said Zhenyu Li, vice president and general manager of Baidu’s Intelligent Driving Group. “We hope to continue to join forces with industry partners to build future roads for autonomous driving through the utilization of IVICS.”
Apollo has been in use in different scenarios in areas such as Beijing and Silicon Valley, enabling autonomous driving features in passenger vehicles, minibuses and logistic vehicles, which lays a solid foundation for Baidu’s IVICS and future intelligent transportation. Building on Apollo’s open ecosystem, Baidu announced it will collaborate with partners including China Unicom, Datang Telecom and China Transinfo on the initiative. Through integrating resources from various sectors of telecommunications, chips, automobile manufacturing, transportation infrastructure construction, government and universities, Apollo will facilitate the development of IVICS.
A trial run of the system will be conducted in China’s pilot AI city – Xiong’an New Area. In addition, Baidu will partner with the College of Transportation Engineering at Tongji University to establish a joint laboratory and collaborate in the planning and design of autonomous driving networks and simulation of traffic systems.
“In the future, Baidu will equip Apollo with Intelligent Vehicle Infrastructure Cooperative Systems modules in software, hardware and cloud services based on its existing four-layer foundation of the open technical framework,” said Ji Tao, technical director of Baidu’s Intelligent Driving Group.
Baidu’s advantages in high-definition mapping and telecommunications connectivity optimization allow the company to seamlessly bridge between vehicles and road infrastructure – a feature which Baidu will offer to its partners, Tao added.
