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China’s Baidu finishes building ‘world’s largest’ test ground for autonomous vehicle, smart driving systems
- Baidu says it has completed the world’s largest site to test both autonomous driving and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication
- The Apollo Park in Beijing is equipped with facilities to support the full autonomous vehicle development process from research to testing
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Chinese search engine giant and artificial intelligence (AI) champion Baidu said on Tuesday that it has completed construction of what it claims to be the world’s largest testing ground for autonomous driving and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication.
The 13,500 square metre (145,300 sq ft) Apollo Park in Beijing’s Yizhuang Economic Development Zone houses more than 200 self-driving vehicles and is equipped with facilities to support the full autonomous vehicle development process from research to testing, Baidu said in a statement on Tuesday.
At the park, Baidu will be collecting and storing data from the daily operations of its fleet of Apollo self-driving cars and testing out controlling vehicles remotely via the cloud, it said.
Baidu said that it is also testing applications that support vehicle-to-infrastructure communication at Apollo Park. Such technologies, which are also being tested by other Chinese tech giants such as Huawei, can remotely connect vehicles with a variety of road traffic elements such as traffic lights, cameras and speed limit signs.
Autonomous cars are high on the development agenda for both the US and China, but the technology has been hard to perfect as navigating in busy, real-world environments is difficult.
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