Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, the three Internet giants, are once again on the same track in the autonomous driving race, with Alibaba acquiring hangzhou’s first autonomous driving license.
But hidden in this seemingly smooth development of the appearance of the dark tide has begun to surge, everyone knows that the first to drive unmanned cars on the fifth Ring Road is the biggest winner, so, according to the current situation of research and development, who will have the last laugh?
Next, xiaobian will lead you to analyze and predict a wave of unmanned driving in the field, who can land first!
Ali may try to overtake on a curve
Autonomous driving is one of the hottest topics in recent years, with not only traditional car companies competing to develop it, but also Internet giants setting up their own LABS and recruiting research teams in an attempt to dominate the market and set industry standards.
In April this year, Ali confirmed that its team is developing L4 and above autonomous driving technology, and has the ability to test in open road sections. There are already vehicles for regular road test, and there are dozens of vehicles under development and research, leading this research and development is the chief scientist of its AI lab Professor Wang Gang.
“Tmall Genie X1”, an artificial intelligence consumer product released by Ali AI LABS, is based on wang gang’s research achievements. He joined Alibaba’s ARTIFICIAL Intelligence Lab in March 2017 and is responsible for the research and development of machine learning, computer vision and natural language understanding.
In addition to its own research and development, Alibaba has also been a big spender in artificial intelligence.
In the past few years, it has invested in a number of unicorns, including Sensetime and Megvii, and is on the verge of wiping out all the unicorns. The acquisition of these tech companies is a big boost for the company in the driverless space, while also blocking its rivals’ access to resources.
Ali has always done things under the radar.
In January this year, in KITTI, the world’s authoritative machine vision algorithm evaluation platform, iDST, the human intelligence research institute of Ali, won the single champion of pedestrian detection. At the same time, In the well-known pedestrian re-recognition data set Market1501, Ali also made a major breakthrough, the first hit rate increased to 96.17%, ranking first in the world.
Baidu was the first to eat crabs
In contrast to Alibaba, Baidu is synonymous with high profile.
Baidu is the first company to put forward the unmanned car plan in China. As early as July 2014, Baidu has confirmed for the first time that it has started the research and development program of “Baidu unmanned car”, which can be said to be the first technology company in the research of unmanned car in China. With the 100th L4 “Apolong” autonomous bus rolling off the production line in Fujian factory, Baidu has announced the start of mass production of self-driving buses.
Since 2017, Xiamen Golden Dragon Bus and Baidu have formally reached a cooperation agreement to jointly develop a driverless electric bus named “Apolong”, which carries baidu Apollo open platform and is the country’s first commercial-grade driverless microcycle electric bus.
The new fleet of 14 seats will be launched in Chinese cities such as Beijing, Shenzhen and Wuhan, and will begin commercial operation in airports, industrial parks and parks with relatively fixed driving ranges. This should be baidu stage victory.
Does that count as landing already? Don’t count.
The L4 that the industry claims to baidu is very controversial, what is L4 standard? Unlike the L5, which can be described as fully autonomous, the L4 is only suitable for certain scenarios, usually in cities or on highways, at a level that allows the car to do all of its driving without any human intervention. The L5 level requires an autonomous vehicle to be able to fully drive the vehicle in any situation.
Baidu Apolong can only operate in specific closed areas, and it will take time to test whether it can run efficiently and safely.
However, a few days ago, baidu and SB Drive (Japan’s softbank corp., self-driving technology research and development company), jinlong bus (xiamen jinlong joint automotive industry co., LTD.) to achieve strategic cooperation, three parties will together develop the Japanese version of the “dragon”, and plans to early 2019 includes test car imports from China, ten of the wave dragon “o”.
Of course, Baidu also through Apollo development platform, gathered a large number of traditional car companies, autonomous driving start-ups to their side, with the force of the platform, in the field of autonomous driving to play a greater potential.
Along this trend, will Baidu stay in the first tier? Will it be the winner? It’s hard to say!
Tencent in the side “eyeing eyeing”
Tencent already has a presence in autonomous driving.
Tencent set up an autonomous driving lab back in 2016. At the end of last year, Tencent had about 50 people in its self-driving lab, which is expected to be expanded by two or three times this year. It is rumored that Tencent has also added T5 level engineers.
In March, Tencent paid $1.78 billion in exchange for a 5% stake in Tesla. Industry insiders have speculated that this is related to Tencent’s driverless layout. Time will tell.
Tencent’s efforts in the driverless space are intertwined, accelerating research and development not only in driverless cars but also in mapping projects.
Maps are crucial for driverless cars, and high-definition real-time maps can help self-driving cars quickly identify traffic conditions and make timely changes to their driving patterns.
Tencent has acquired a 10 percent stake in mapping company Here, along with Siwei Tuxin and Singapore government investment agency GIC, giving it another ace in the driverless car business.
Not only that, in April this year, Tencent also driverless cars on the fourth Ring Road! Although there was a driver at the wheel, it was in line with the general idea of the driverless car introduced by Tencent at the 2017 Global Partner Conference — the core of which is “advanced assisted driving” and “driverless driving”.
Su Kuifeng, head of Tencent Autopilot Lab, said: “2018 is the first year of Tencent autopilot productization. We will focus on promoting the landing of L3 products and providing scene data support for L4 and L5.”
This could be Tencent’s breakthrough year in autonomous driving.
The big guy makes a move, and it kills him
Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, the three Internet giants in the field of autonomous driving, the “open competition and hidden competition” gradually entered the white-hot.
For now, however, Baidu has the biggest ambitions to be the industry leader, followed by Tencent with a series of strategic initiatives and Alibaba with a low profile in research and development. Who will have the last laugh is anyone’s guess.
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