Competition is certainly heating up in the driverless vehicle space. Baidu has been working hard to catch up to Google’s driverless car tech. Baidu’s modified BM3 series successfully tested autonomous testing for on mixed roads near the company’s headquarters in Beijing. The autonomous car traveled 30km (18.6 miles).
It executed a range of maneuvers, including U-turns, lane changes and merging into traffic from ramps. Baidu has amassed a library of 3D road maps to guide its autonomous vehicles. The vehicle made right/left/U-turns, passed other cars and merged into traffic on its own while going at a top speed of 62 mph.
Baidu’s autonomous car is loaded with the company’s “AutoBrain” that brings object recognition and environment perception technology onboard to detect other vehicles, obstacle and road lanes.
This AutoBrain system is also loaded with the company’s highly automated driving (HAD) maps, which records 3D road data (to within a few centimeters of accuracy) that the vehicle can access when positioning itself.