Remote control technology could be the key to moving autonomous driving forward, WeRide CEO says
- Currently, most autonomous cars tested on the road in the US and China still require the presence of a safety driver
After 10 years in academia, Tony Han Xu gave up a coveted tenured position as an associate professor at the University of Missouri two years ago to pursue a new path – becoming an entrepreneur.
Following close to a decade of research in computer vision and deep learning, coupled with a stint as Baidu’s chief scientist for autonomous driving at a time when investors were chasing the industry, Han decided it was time to strike out on his own to build WeRide, a start-up specialising in autonomous driving technology.
Today, WeRide is part of a group of Chinese start-ups, including Pony.ai and AutoX, hoping to eventually put driverless cars on the road for passengers by creating multi-sensor systems aimed at helping the cars drive themselves.
For Chinese companies like WeRide and Pony.ai, as well as US firms like Waymo, the holy grail is to reach Level 5 in autonomous driving – whereby a driverless car would be able to perform driving tasks in all environmental and road conditions the same way (or even better than) a human can.
The catch – achieving L5 could still be over 10 or even 20 years away, says 43-year-old Han.
“There are genuine challenges today – we still cannot really get a reliable machine to pass the Turing test,” said Han, referring to a test that assesses the ability of a computer to exhibit intelligent behaviour that is indistinguishable from a human.