Baidu Apollo Launches Camera Based Solution for Level 4 Autonomous Driving
On June 19, Baidu launched Apollo Lite, a vision-based autonomous driving solution that leverages multiple cameras to achieve Level 4 (L4) autonomous driving. The new solution accelerates the development of fully autonomous vehicles that will enhance the mobility experience and create opportunities for businesses across markets.
Apollo Lite, Baidu’s latest autonomous driving solution and China’s only vision-based L4 AV solution, has the capacity to process vast amounts of data generated by its 10 cameras to enable the stable detection of objects up to 700 feet away from the vehicle. The system provides real-time, 360-degree sensing of the environment around the vehicle for safety.
“A robust vision-based system is critical to the safety of autonomous driving, especially in high-speed situations where real-time sensing is critical,” said Liang Wang, head of Apollo’s technical committee. “Apollo Lite further strengthens Baidu’s sensor fusion based autonomous driving system that leverages camera, Lidar and radar to achieve the ‘true redundancy’ necessary for a safe and fully autonomous driving experience.”
Most recently, Baidu’s autonomous vehicles relying on Apollo Lite successfully completed L4 autonomous driving on parts of Beijing’s open roads without using spinning Lidars. This is the result of many iterations driven by real world testing on open roads and means that Baidu’s vehicles are capable of operating autonomously within specific geographic areas and under certain weather conditions.
Baidu began autonomous driving research and development in early 2013 and open-sourced the Apollo software platform in 2017 to enable developers and partners to quickly build their own autonomous driving systems. Since then, Baidu also introduced Apollo Enterprise, a commercial initiative that supports a suite of customizable intelligent driving products and solutions for mass production vehicles.
Both the Apollo open platform and the Apollo Enterprise have grown at a rapid pace, with Apollo’s latest version, Apollo 3.5, gathering over 390,000 lines of code and over 12,000 Github contributors. DuerOS for Apollo, a comprehensive Internet of Vehicles (IoV) solution platform for mass production under Apollo Enterprise, has partnered with over 60 of the world’s largest automotive manufacturers across more than 300 car models to date.
Featured photo credit to cnet.com
