Nvidia and Baidu jump into the autonomous car craze after the latter receives approval to test in California. The two tech giants will join forces to develop Level-3 artificial intelligence for driverless cars.
The infancy stage of the project is eyeing for potential fleet of driverless taxi for Baidu. The company is targeting the next five years for mass-production of these vehicles. However, both are also taunting the idea of offering the platform to car manufacturers. If the project goes well, any brand can carry the third-party AI in their cars.
Both Nvidia and Baidu consider the partnership a timely approach to the growing interest in driverless cars. Nvidia already has blueprints in artificial intelligence and they will bring the results on the table. Baidu will then compliment this by plotting their high-definition maps that is already in cloud technology. The finished platform will most likely result to a car with Nvidia's AI as driver and Baidu navigating with 3D maps, according to The Verge.
Meanwhile, Baidu USA announced that there will be a 100-man team to push the research in Silicon Valley. Although the company did not provide any update yet about how much of the roster have been filled as of Sept 6.
Another development is that California DMV issues green light for issuance of testing permit for Baidu to use public roads for prototypes. Techcrunch reported that Baidu will still follow the basic requirements for testing. These include the presence of manual control and a human driver whenever plying in public roads.
To clarify, Level-3 autonomous cars are not really "driverless" per se but only "partial driverless". This means that a driver should still be present to handle the steering wheel from time to time. While automatic navigation is still the "brain" of Level-3 cars, human intervention is still needed.
