On the pages of our website, we already wrote that Baidu plans to begin mass production of unmanned vehicles by 2019. Often it happens that the company's plans do not coincide with the realities. But not in this case. Indeed, recently the Chinese company has already released the first batch of unmanned buses, which will begin to circulate through the streets of China and Japan in the near future.
The first batch of buses counts 100 copies and, according to TechCrunch, one bus will accommodate 14 passengers. The Apollo autopilot of the fourth generation will operate the vehicles. In the Chinese city of Shenzhen, unmanned buses are planned to be launched this year. The first route through the city streets will be only 3 kilometers and will include 10 stops. In Japan, the launch is scheduled for the first quarter of the next 2019.
It's worth noting that Apollo is a fairly popular autopilot with open source code (Apollo, by the way, Jaguar uses it in its development). And it is thanks to the autopilot Baidu can take a leading position in the market. Representatives of Baidu believe that unmanned transport requires a set of multimedia functions for the entertainment of passengers. Similar properties can not boast at the moment any of the existing autopilots, but it is Apollo in terms of adding the feature is the most flexible.
A source - https://hi-news.ru