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

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

[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.