Nvidia launched in January its Drive PX 2, an engine for in-vehicle artificial intelligence. The partnership will take advantage of Baidu’s cloud platform and mapping technology, and combine it with Nvidia’s self-driving computing platform to develop maps, autonomous vehicle control and automated parking. Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and Baidu CEO Robin Li unveiled the partnership August 31 at the Baidu World Conference in Beijing, saying they will apply technologies from each company to create the platform and build on the work the two have done over the past four years in the rapidly growing field of artificial intelligence (AI).
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The open platform will be available for branded auto OEM consumer vehicle offerings, as well as fleets of driverless commercial vehicles.
The company is looking to go into mass production with autonomous cars in five years. “We can start applying these capabilities to solve the grand challenges of AI, one of which is intelligent machines”.
Chinese Internet giant Baidu said it has received permission from authorities in California to test its autonomous driving technologies in the state.
In China, Nvidia and Baidu will use artificial intelligence for developing a “cloud-to-car” autonomous auto platform.
Baidu set up an open platform for deep learning research tools and one for its artificial intelligence portal so that a wide range of industries will be able to use them to enhance efficiency, Chief Scientist Andrew Ng said.
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Baidu has made an aggressive push into the self-driving vehicle market. More recently, Baidu and Ford invested a combined $150 million in Velodyne LiDAR, makers of light, detection, and ranging technology for 3D digital imaging.
