Baidu, Inc. took the opportunity of Baidu World 2020, the company’s annual technology conference held in cooperation with broadcaster CCTV, to demonstrate its latest Apollo developments. That included a new fully automated driving technology, in which the company’s AI (artificial intelligence) system can drive itself without a safety driver inside the vehicle.

It expects the breakthrough will help accelerate the large-scale deployment of autonomous driving technology across China. Zhenyu Li, Corporate Vice President of Baidu and General Manager of the Intelligent Driving Group (IDG), demonstrated the technology in Beijing’s Shougang Park with CCTV anchor Xiaofeng Bao.

“The three core components of Apollo’s fully automated driving technology are pre-installed and mass-produced vehicles, the ‘experienced AI driver,’ and the 5G remote driving service,” said Zhenyu Li during the demonstration. With each new generation of Apollo vehicles, the cost will be halved while performance will increase by tenfold, he added.

The pre-installed and mass-produced vehicle (in other words, non-retro-fitted) portion of the strategy is the foundation, with the AI driving system is now capable of operating vehicles independently but the 5G remote driving service allows for remote human operators to intervene in case of emergencies.

In 2019, Baidu partnered with FAW Group to jointly develop the Hongqi EV robotaxi, said to be the first pre-installed and mass-produced robotaxi in China. The tech has since been deployed in unmanned driving tests in multiple China cities including Beijing, Changsha, Guangzhou, Chongqing, and Cangzhou. Compared with modified models, the company says that purpose-built vehicles better guarantee consistency and safety.

In August, Baidu began Apollo Go robotaxi service in Cangzhou, Hebei province, extending coverage to the downtown area of a city for the first time in China. A month later, it launched the service in Beijing, becoming the first company to allow people in China’s capital to use robotaxis. The service encompasses the largest total area and longest road network—about 700 km (435 mi)—for a manned autonomous driving test area in China, with nearly 100 pickup and dropoff stations covering residential and business areas in Yizhuang, Haidian, and Shunyi districts.

The robotaxi launch event was held at Apollo Park, what the company calls the world’s largest autonomous driving and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) test base and one of the Apollo Go stations—located in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area. As the first company to provide robotaxi service in Beijing, Apollo Go will launch 40 vehicles, with users registering on Baidu Maps or the Apollo website. The Apollo Go public service in cities including Changsha and Cangzhou make Baidu the only company with robotaxi pilot operations in multiple cities across China.

Beijing, the technology and innovation center of China, is a strategic location for AI and autonomous driving development. As the first city in China to regulate and open autonomous driving road test zones, it has comprehensive infrastructure and policies to foster high-speed development of the industry. Beijing is also an important city for Baidu’s autonomous driving development, with Baidu beginning its innovation there in 2013. In December 2019, Baidu’s Apollo claimed 40 of the first batch of manned autonomous driving test licenses issued by the city. After eight months of small-scale manned testing, the fleet completed road tests totaling 519,000 km (322,000 mi) before opening up to the general public.

The Apollo unit has also released its fifth-generation autonomous driving kit, with the first pre-installed and mass-produced vehicles that meet the requirements for fully automated operations launching soon.

The company’s “experienced AI driver,” the AI control independent of a human driver, has completed over six million kilometers of road testing “with a record low of zero accidents.” Having carried over 100,000 passengers across 27 cities around the world, the driver “is well-trained” and capable of handling various technological challenges of unmanned driving and “solving the overwhelming majority of possible issues on the road.”

In the case of “exceptional emergencies,” the 5G remote driving service complements the AI driver with human operators who can remotely access vehicles. The teleoperation is powered by smart transportation systems, vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technologies, and the high bandwidth and response speed of 5G networks. The service is engaged instantaneously to provide immediate assistance from remote human operators when the user or the system switches to parallel driving mode.

All remote human operators have completed over 1000 h of cloud-based driving training without any accidents, so they can ensure the safety of passengers and pedestrians in the non-autonomous driving mode. Since extreme occasions for which human intervention will be rare, the company says that one remote human operator will be able to manage multiple vehicles simultaneously.

With these advancements, Robin Li, Cofounder, Chairman, and CEO of Baidu expects that unmanned driving will create a new ecosystem of shared transportation, and the autonomous driving industry will enter the stage of full commercialization in 2025.

Also at Baidu World 2020, Apollo announced new product and technological developments.

Vehicle manufacturer WM Motor’s Weltmeister brand will launch a new model incorporating Apollo’s valet parking in 2021, making the application the first in China to be equipped with L4 autonomous valet parking technology. It will be able to identify vacant parking spots in multistory parking garages and allow people to use autonomous-parking and smart-summon functions with one simple click.

Apollo also showcased its latest UX (user experience) technology. According to IHS Markit’s latest “Report on Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) Development Trends in the Chinese Market,” DuerOS for Apollo is the world’s most installed CAV system. The smart voice-interaction and -recognition system has been installed on over one million vehicles. The company is partnering with over 60 major automotive brands and covers more than 500 vehicle models on the market with the system.

Smart-transportation infrastructure based on V2X technologies promises to improve traffic efficiency by 15% to 30% and boost the contribution to GDP by 2.4% to 4.8% in absolute value, according to Apollo. Its smart-transportation solution, called the ACE Transportation Engine, has been put in use in nearly 20 cities in China. Robin Li estimates that by 2025 major Chinese cities will no longer need to limit vehicle purchases and usage, and by 2030 most traffic congestion issues can be solved by higher transportation efficiency.

During a smart-transportation forum at Baidu World 2020, Baidu launched Apollo 6.0, the latest version of its open platform, adding multiple cloud services to make it more accessible for developers. The unit has now released 600,000 lines of open source code, gathering 45,000 developers and 210 ecosystem partners globally.