Baidu Speeds Up Driverless Race With First Full Test On Beijing Roads (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Chinese web giant Baidu has successfully completed a driverless car test route on a variety of road types near the company's Beijing headquarters. The self-driving BMW 3 Series traveled almost two miles, navigating 'complex road conditions.' The vehicle completed a number of maneuvers, including U-turns, lane changes, and joining traffic [WSJ, paywalled] from a motorway ramp. The autonomous car peaked at a speed of 62 miles per hour. According to Baidu, its Highly Automated Driving (HAD) mapping technology is able to capture 3D road data and detect vehicles, lanes and objects to within a matter of centimeters.

Comments

Within a matter of centimeters?

[Anonymous Coward]

Within a matter of centimeters? Like how many, exactly... 2? 10? 10,000?

Re:Within a matter of centimeters?

[cayenne8]

From the article:

The autonomous car peaked at a speed of 62 miles per hour.

Sure..that's good for neighborhoods with small children, but what can it do on the open highway?

Around here, you do 62mph on the highway, you're gonna get your ass run over....

:)

Re:Within a matter of centimeters?

[hughperkins]

Have you seen the roads around Baidu headquarters, ie near Wudaokou? Jam packed with traffic, except at 4am. From around 7am in the morning, it takes 20-30 minutes to go a couple of kilometres...

Re:Within a matter of centimeters?

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap, doing 60 on the highway around here would be a dream come true.

Re:Within a matter of centimeters?

[jrumney]

You misunderstand. That was while it was doing U-turns, lane changes and joining traffic. All on a motorway ramp.

Google might as well give up now. The Chinese just won the race to provide a self-driving car that can deal with real Beijing traffic conditions.

Should be much easier in China

[ugen]

Keep in mind that in China drivers have unquestionable priority over pedestrians. The latter have to duck and weave around traffic when crossing. So - autonomous vehicle would not need to take them into account.
Also - expensive vehicles have de-facto priority, something that drivers of less expensive cars tend to voluntarily acquiesce to. Making autonomous vehicle a BMW surely helps. In fact, were they to choose a Bentley, the driving software would only need to follow the GPS line without any additional traffic and obstacle related logic.

Re:Should be much easier in China

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what? Screw 'em. Let 'em cancel my account. I'm sick of paywalls.

BEIJING—Chinese Internet search giant Baidu Inc. is joining the race to develop autonomous cars, and planning to field its first such vehicles in China within three years.

Wang Jing, a Baidu senior vice president, told The Wall Street Journal that the company is setting up a new business unit that will work on developing autonomous vehicles for use as public shuttles. Mr. Wang will head the new unit.

Technology heavyweights from Alphabet Inc.’s Google to Samsung Electronics Co. and car makers from Toyota Motor Corp. to Tesla Motors Inc. are competing to develop components and technology for self-driving and Internet-connected cars. Many car makers already offer features that enable cars to take over critical functions and increase safety.

Baidu’s plan comes as Google is moving closer to commercializing its self-driving car technology. In September, Google hired an auto-industry veteran to run its project, which started in 2009, and it is now tackling more complicated maneuvers such as making right turns at stop lights.

The company last year hired Stanford researcher Andrew Ng, who also helped set up Google’s artificial-intelligence effort, to head its research center in Sunnyvale, Calif. Mr. Ng is among the researchers involved in Baidu’s car project, Baidu says.

Mr. Wang said Baidu’s two prototype BMW 3 Series Gran Turismo autonomous cars are being road-tested on expressways in Beijing’s northern outskirts, including on the city’s Fifth Ring Road. Baidu is planning to expand its fleet, Mr. Wang said. He said Baidu is in discussions with Chinese and foreign auto makers, but declined to elaborate.

Baidu’s plan calls for its future vehicles to operate on fixed routes or within set urban areas. “We will cooperate with some governments to provide shared vehicles like a shuttle service; it could be a car or van, but for public use,” Mr. Wang said. Baidu doesn’t have a time frame or goal for making self-driving cars commercially available for private consumers.

In April, Boston Consulting Group cautioned that self-driving cars likely won’t hit the road until 2025, but autonomous vehicles could appear sooner in more controlled situations such as automated ride-sharing services in city centers.

In China, bus maker Zhengzhou Yutong Bus Co. Ltd. in September said its prototype self-driving bus completed a 33 kilometer (20-mile) drive on an intercity road in central China and was able to change lanes, pass other vehicles and respond to traffic lights.

Baidu’s cars are equipped with a laser radar, or Lidar, and sensors and cameras with varying visibility ranges. Its software draws on Baidu’s highly detailed maps as well as its “deep-learning” technology.

Baidu said its car has been tested on highways hundreds of times, with several trips each day.

Still, Baidu is well behind Google, whose 50-plus self-driving cars have covered more than a million miles and are currently being tested on public roads in urban areas of California and in Austin, Texas. Such settings are seen as more challenging than highways because they involve intersections and pedestrians.

Baidu’s next steps involve testing the prototype cars in new situations, such as narrow city streets or wide boulevards, and in rain or snow. Mr. Wang said that developing an autonomous car that can adapt to China’s often unpredictable driving conditions is a challenge.

“China’s traffic is more complicated,” Mr. Wang said. “The behavior of pedestrians, cyclists, are very different from [those] in the U.S.”

Another potential challenge for Baidu is that China has yet to enact laws to allow for autonomous vehicles. Still, Baidu believes such technology could make roads safer. The World Health Organization has estimated that 261,000 people died on China’s roads in 2013, com

Re:Should be much easier in China

[retchdog]

It's true. I think the major issue with pedestrian collision would be to just program the car to repeatedly ram the obstacle until they're dead.

Re:Should be much easier in China

[Anonymous Coward]

For Beijing driving? I propose they call name this project Frankenstein

Re:Should be much easier in China

[AmiMoJo]

So pretty much like the UK then? Over here pedestrians and particularly cyclists are usually ignored, and the more expensive your car the fewer road rules you need to obey. People buy large, tall cars because they know drivers of lesser vehicles will swerve out the way to avoid accidents.

Re:Should be much easier in China

[LifesABeach]

Interesting, with all that money and technology, the BMW3 convertible wasn't used.

Isn't Baidu a search engine?

[Anonymous Coward]

With Google in the race as well, I guess every Internet search/advertising company needs to have its own autonomous car research lab.

No wonder Yahoo is being sold off for parts. :-)

Re:Isn't Baidu a search engine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, what does internet search and advertising have to do with cars? Kind of like they have got so much money they are playing around and having some fun. That is great, but it is time to wake up your bullshit detectors.

The real cognitive dissonance that should come up in this constant stream of driverless vehicle articles is if there are so many companies making big, heavy, fast moving, and potentially dangerous self-driving cars that can navigate a wide variety of changing road, weather, pedestrian, and traffic conditions then why is this navigating ability not being used on robots for household and factory use? Indoor conditions would be much more controlled, speeds lower, more constant lighting, fewer random events happening, etc. There are not even any robots that can go fetch a mail bin and deliver it to another location that is quick and reasonably priced. They should be able to whip through the hallways and factory floors if this level of self navigation has been reached. Most indoor robots require embedded cables or painted tracks to follow and all move so very slowly. They move so slowly so they don't hit anything, yet these cars can drive at regular speeds?

Re:Isn't Baidu a search engine?

[thoromyr]

I hear what you are saying, but I think the issue is one of price. If driverless vehicles become practical then if you are already paying $30,000 for a car you might be enticed to pay $45,000 -- particularly if the manufacturer has cut a deal with your car insurance company. But forget personal sales, an enterprise with a fleet of company cars can pay a bit more for driverless while likely driving down other costs.

What can an autonomous home robot do? Feed the pets? Let the dog out? Are people going to shell out $15,000 for that?

Does an industrial robot actually need to be autonomous? Will it save the company money to buy one versus using a paint trail for a cheaper model to follow?

Another point to consider is this: car insurance is a thriving business that makes a lot of money and is always looking for ways to line their pockets further. Although its possible a human driver will be better than a computer in edge cases, a lot of accidents are not edge cases and are trivially avoidable. Such as following too closely, running stop signs and running red lights. For the most part car insurance has a cap on what they will pay for the truly bad accidents, but the nickle-and-diming of paying out for minor accidents adds up given the large numbers. Google (or whoever) will find willing (if greedy) partners in the car insurance companies who will turn the screws on their customers.

If driverless cars come about, it will be the various incentives that drives adoption. Personally, I'd rather have an effective mass transit system in place, but the money is in selling individualized transportation. So companies will keep looking for ways to monetize that.

Re:Isn't Baidu a search engine?

[greenfruitsalad]

i thought it was obvious. what do you, as a passenger, do in the car while it's being driven? consume content, including advertisements. advertisements tailored to your destination.

Re:Isn't Baidu a search engine?

[AK Marc]

What can an autonomous home robot do? Feed the pets? Let the dog out? Are people going to shell out $15,000 for that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I have no idea how much one of those would cost, but a robot that's confusable for a person would be worth 10x your $15,000 number. Even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... has ones I'd spend $100,000 or more on. Need home repairs? Sure, done. Need the gardening done, not just the lawn mowed, but every plant identified, cataloged, and pulled if non native or invasive, and tended to as per botanist's recommendations? Sure. Twice a day, to perfection. Paint the house? That's a few thousand in labor for a human, and the robot will do a better job. The manual labor/maintenance work would be done, 24/7 by an automaton to perfection. Never need to pay or wait for delivery again,

The human analog robot would be worth a lot to a homeowner. Though, I expect an intercity apartment dweller would see much less use from it. Perhaps as a more trusted dog walker and grocery getter, replacing sub-minimum wage jobs. But the homeowner would see much more benefit. Keeping a house nice is a full time job (or more than just one).

Personally, I'd rather have an effective mass transit system in place, but the money is in selling individualized transportation.

So combine them. Personal rapid transport. It's cheaper than mass transit, and more like people want. Personally, I like http://www.skytran.com/ though their first operational public system is scheduled to be working before then end of 2015, and that's days away, and it's not operational, so they may go the way of the monorail. Cheaper than buses, more efficient than a hybrid, faster than roads, and never having to worry about parking. And if it works as described, cities should replace roads with them, and when 100% of roads have PRT above them, then people can buy their own station at their house, and park a personal car there, and have a PRT/car hybrid system, where you can own your car, so you never have to share with anyone, or just use the shared cars. A small toll for the private cars (rolled into property tax), and a small taxi fee for those that use the system's cars, and solves all the problems. More capacity than a full train, cheaper to build, and cheaper to run. There's not a single feature that a train beats PRT on. Though thinking for any weakness, time to board would be an issue. Think of the Superbowl. 100,000 people trying to get in one at the same time. Trains can board 1000 people in 10 seconds (10 cars, 10 people per second per car, reminds me of NYC), but at 20 seconds per car (1-4 people per car, as they are not shared transport unless you choose to share with your family/friends), PRT could be 2000 times slower for burst demand. Though, that's still faster than driving away. A regular game can lead to wait times of 30 minutes in the parking lot, just to get on the street, and then lots of time after that wasted in heavier traffic. At least with PRT, once you are on the system, you'll be going 60 mph+ towards you destination, regardless of time of day or demand.

Horns of a dilemma

[hyades1]

As somebody who has driven on many occasions in Agincourt, Ontario, and escaped with my life, I have to say I'm torn.

I can't make up my mind which would be more terrifying: with driver, or without driver (software designed where pedestrians are regarded as targets of opportunity).

I'm sure they're 100% honest

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would the gor-am Chinese lie to us about anything? I'm sure all they're reporting is 100% accurate and honest, and the autonomous car they've developed is far and away better than anything the West has come up with. We shoudl just renounce our Democratic Republic/capitalist ways and beg the Chinese to come run our country for us because we suck so much! Please, Communist gods, come save us from ourselves! I'm sure they'll magically make ISIS disappear from the planet, too, and bring Putin to heel with a single word. All Hail our new communist overlords!

Driverless cars may be what China needs

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I'm not trying to be racist and claim that all Asians everywhere are bad drivers. I've spent a decent amount of time in Asia as a tourist in various places and except for China proper (meaning NOT Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan) I've never seen really crazy or dangerous driving. But man, does China ever have a lot of bad drivers. I remember 4 years ago taking a taxi from my hotel to the airport in Shanghai and it was maybe a 40 minute drive. I remember being on 6 lane roads and seeing other cars swerving back and forth between 2 lanes while their driver talked on a cell phone and lots of cars that simply couldn't maintain their lane at all. Even the taxi driver seemed frustrated, but he didn't speak English so I couldn't talk to him about it. The only saving grace was that there weren't a lot of other cars on the road at the time so it wasn't all that difficult to avoid the crazy drivers. A couple of years ago I spent a few weeks in Guangdong Province and the drivers were pretty bad there too in general. I remember being horrified in one town at the number of intersections with no stop signs or traffic lights and drivers just pretty much doing whatever they felt like. I also remember someone in Shanghai telling me that driver education was a complete joke there and people could get drivers licenses with almost training or experience at all.

Re:Driverless cars may be what China needs

[Anonymous Coward]

China has a lot of bad drivers, but then so does California. I was amazed when I moved here just how incompetent the drivers are. China has the problem of having absolutely no politeness in its driving though. At least in California people give way occasionally, and certainly to pedestrians (to the point that being a pedestrian can be frustrating for a Brit when the guilt of seeing cars stop for you completely unnecessarily kicks in). In China you get many bad drivers, but equally many competent but very aggressive drivers because the roads have developed in such a way that that is the only way to get anywhere.

Re:Driverless cars may be what China needs

[Strudelkugel]

Oddly enough I actually like the way they drive in China better than in the US. It's certainly true that Chinese traffic laws are more policy hints than laws, or so it seems, but Chinese drivers make maximum use of the roadway and gaps in traffic. For the most part, traffic keeps moving, but at slower speeds. In the US, people follow the laws so traffic flows faster. The problem with this is that when accidents do happen, they are usually at higher speeds and therefore a lot worse. I don't know how anyone could possibly drive in Beijing while being distracted by a phone. All the taxis I rode in were driven by people who had to be focused on the traffic around them. No way they could navigate it otherwise. For all of these reasons a self driving car that can navigate Chinese streets tells me the technology is advancing.

Chinese driving habits make crossing a street as a pedestrian a rather memorable experience. Good practice for getting used to self driving cars that slow down but don't stop when you are in front of them.

Re:Driverless cars may be what China needs

[Ogive17]

I've spent a lot of time in Mexico recently. Stop signs are optional and most painted lines on the road are so faded that no one follows them.. however driver actions are very predictable.

Compare that to the US where traffic laws are generally followed and road conditions are much better.. however there are many crazy fucks behind the wheel that do random stupid shit.

Re:Driverless cars may be what China needs

[jandersen]

The thing to keep in mind is that in China most drivers are still relatively new - they went from nearly no cars to jam packed in what seems like 20 years. On top of that, from my visits to China, I have got the impression that traffic rules are optional (although the Chinese will strongly deny this); this is slowly changing. And the final thing that makes Chinese traffic seem chaotic to visitors is the fact that many of the rules are slightly different in surprising ways - in Europe, for example, red light simply means STOP! - but in China, you are allowed to turn right at red lights. It is also acceptable, if not actually legal, to take some rather exotic left turns (when the light is green, that is) across the approching traffic in the opposite direction, if you are daring enough.

Coming from UK, I have had a hard time getting used to driving in Beijing - in London, for example, people will routinely help each other, especially in dense traffic: you let other drivers in front of you if they come in from a side road, just like you pull over to make room for emergency vehicles. Not so in Beijing; the number of times I have been shocked by the blatant attempts at cutting me off, when I felt it was clear that I would like to get into another lane (like when my lane is blocked). The trick seems to be that you use the horn to say "get out of the way", so perhaps it is just a question of me having to learn the right "body language".

I remember being horrified in one town at the number of intersections with no stop signs or traffic lights and drivers just pretty much doing whatever they felt like.

Interestingly, there have been experiments in some towns in Europe, I think, with removing traffic lights at road crossings - and it turns out that people usually start driving much more carefully, and the traffic isn't actually slowed down dramatically by it. At the end of the day, most of our impression of drivers in other countries being poor drivers is probably down to our expectations not matching what people in those countries find quite obvious. You can see it to some extent with American tourists in London; some have a really hard time with the fact that roads are not laid out in a grid and numbered. To me, that is the right way; you don't want to live on chess board.

Re:Driverless cars may be what China needs

[Bearhouse]

It's not cultural, it's all about effective enforcement of traffic laws.
I've driven, and been driven, all around the world.
Shocking driving in the Middle East, most of Africa, India and lots of Asia?
Sure. But that's because you can get a driving licence for cheap, and even if you get stopped by the cops it'll be a simple matter of a small cash bribe and you're on your way. Couple that with death-trap old cars and rubbish roads and for sure there are plenty of bad accidents.
But...Singapore? Asian culture meets draconian policing - guess what? pretty safe driving.
Left to their own devices, people EVERYWHERE drive badly...

Re:Driverless cars may be what China needs

[losfromla]

complete, utter bullshit

Re:Driverless cars may be what China needs

[AK Marc]

If it's so crazy, why didn't you see any crashes?

In Dallas, when you pull into traffic, you ask yourself the question, "If I pull out, and they slam on the brakes, would they hit me?" If the answer is "no" you go. Drivers in Dallas will "cut you off" all the time. Most of the rest of the US is in between the two, but in Boston, if the person you are pulling out in front of could floor it and hit you before you hit the person that was previously in front of them, they'll try, and lay on the horn for 37.32 minutes. Some will hit you out of spite, and claim you cut them off. So Boston drivers don't cut people off (or when they do, they accelerate hard to get out of the way as much as possible).

When I was in Paris, looking down from the Eiffel Tower, Pont d'lena dead ends into Quai Branly, and Pont d'lena is 3 lanes. The traffic stops 5-wide across the 3-lanes. Safe? No. Sane? No. Done every single light consistently for the 10-20 cycles I watched? Yes.

Or NYC. Right turn on red is illegal. There are too many pedestrians. So, because you can't turn on green because the pedestrans are in your way, and you can't turn on red, you improvise. The right lane is stopped. Everyone in the right lane is turning right, but no turn signals are on. When the light turns yellow, the second person in line moves into the next lane. The third the lane after. In unison, one car per lane fans out and stops. When the cycle comes around, the light turns green, and all of the cars turn, one per lane into the cross street. They stop for the pedestrians and wait. When the pedestrians are gone, the cross street gets a green, and they go. Again, to outsiders, it'd look like madness. But it works.

So a tourist in China would have no basis for critique. You don't even speak the language, so obviously can't understand a local's explanation of the behavior. There are lots of rules, and they are followed, they just didn't make sense to you. One of the rules in China is if only one person has damage to the front of their car, they are 100% at fault. It's not fair. It leads to lots of people aggressively cutting off others. But it works. It's no "worse" than Paris, NYC, Boston, or LA, just with different rules you didn't understand.

Built in `Reverse to kill'?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/09/why_drivers_in_china_intentionally_kill_the_pedestrians_they_hit_china_s.html

...and it's without emissions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Runs on bricks made of Peking's smog. So it's naturally recycling its fuel source. :-)

China has less liability and $30,000 to $50,000

[Joe_Dragon]

China has less liability and $30,000 to $50,000 per death is not much for a google to cover if some thing messes up.

will west(googel etc) copycat technology as usual

[sittingnut]

i am tired of seeing western copycats like google and apple (totally lacking in innovation) copying technology developed by non west (usually asian ).
from paper, to paper money, to rockets, to now this. everything is copied.
instead of copying others, people of european heritage (usually white) need to develop a culture that encourage new inventions and creativity, so far they have failed utterly. maybe it is not just culture but genetics. but to say that would be racist. no wonder white liberals are all for political correctness.

Pollution-less Cars

[Baby Duck]

Based on the images coming from Beijing recently, shouldn't they be working on pollution-less cars?

Re:will west(googel etc) copycat technology as usu

[fluffernutter]

Next you'll be telling us that the Chinese actually invented round corners.

Confirms my thoughts on the real agenda

[recharged95]

That driverless cars are really for selling infotainment, the associate hardware, and... more content. Aside from all the personal data that can be collected and mined for ads and selling you more stuff. The more your face is looking at a screen, the more you buy stuff--content is king. And more the stuff bought means ++ for all those manufacturing companies in the east--really, they are only making money from volume of something (like smartphones).

Traffic, efficiency, safety are backseat items in this driverless race. It's all about you to buy something and track your activities in a car.

Child issues

[jraff2]

I want to see a course with parked cars on the side of the road. Drive along a side street, see a ball, toy, dog, cat, etc. come out between the cars. Apply breaks and or steer away to avoid the child chasing the item. Go for it!

Re:Child issues

[AK Marc]

Foreign object is trivial and solved. More interesting is someone else violating all the rules. A police chase chased a criminal onto a one-way street, the wrong way. So you are driving down the middle lane of a 3-lane one-way road, one car coming at you, what do you do? When that's past, then you can see the police, what do you do then?

Or the ones where humans haven't solved it. Drive in white-out conditions. I've driven in white-out conditions. It's not easy, and much of it is playing the percentages. "Please don't let there be a car broken down in my lane", and such. The type of conditions that lead to the hundred+ car pile-ups in California. Even those who stop, just get rear-ended. So stopping isn't the correct solution. The only way I know to not get involved is to slow (or stop) then get off the road as quickly as possible, and hope nobody rams you on the shoulder (or just off it). Assuming the other cars will play by the rules isn't a reasonable assumption, but the question gets into the freedom to "think" and act when things are to the point there is no safe place on the road, even if stopped.

Re: will west(googel etc) copycat technology as us

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the /s tags.
Or does the PLA eschew sarcasm ?

Re: will west(googel etc) copycat technology as us

[sittingnut]

in addition to lack of innovation and creativity, westerners of european heritage are totally clueless about sense of humor. when was the last time you saw a non jewish original comedian in west?
westerners need tags, cue cards, and laugh tracks, to tell them when to laugh and smile.

wouldn't be surprised if i am given examples of allegedly non jewish comedians in reply to this.
no tags here.