We took a ride in Huawei’s smartphone-controlled Porsche
Not fully autonomous driving, but still impressive
It was a pretty blatant publicity stunt… but as stunts go, it was a fun one.
First of all, it was a very brief ride. The car drove forward twice, with each run lasting less than ten seconds.
Most of our time inside the car was spent listening to instructions from the backup driver, and putting commands into the smartphone. While the phone can (allegedly) recognize obstacles, in this demo it required passengers to select how they’d like to avoid obstacles, whether by swerving left, right, or stopping.
In front of the car were giant cardboard pictures of a cyclist, a football and a dog. A camera mounted on top of the car sent images of what it saw to the phone, which then recognized the objects and instantly proceeded to tell the car how to react.