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
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.
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.
Baidu started development of self-driving technologies in 2013. Its self-driving unit Apollo has tested autonomous driving cars in 24 cities around the world and completed more than 100,000 passenger trips, the company said.
Baidu to build autonomous driving test facility in Chongqing
Earlier this year, the Beijing-based company jumped into the top five among autonomous driving technology companies in Navigant Research’s annual survey for the first time, trailing only Google’s self-driving unit Waymo, Ford and Cruise.
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