Baidu has received permission for running a fully driverless robo taxi service in China.
About Baidu
Baidu, Inc. is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing’s Haidian District.[3] It is one of the largAest AI and Internet companies in the world. The holding company of the group is incorporated in the Cayman Islands.Baidu was incorporated in January 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu. The Baidu search engine is currently the sixth largest website in the Alexa Internet rankings.Baidu has origins in RankDex, an earlier search engine developed by Robin Li in 1996, before he founded Baidu in 2000.
Robo taxi in Beijing
CNBC reported, “China’s capital city has moved one step closer toward letting ordinary people take robotaxis with no driver in them.
In a first for the country, two Chinese companies — Baidu’s Apollo Go and Pony.ai — announced Thursday they received permission from Beijing city authorities to remove the safety driver for part of their robotaxi business in a suburban part of the city.” But they also said, “The cars will still need a staff member to sit inside, but not necessarily in the driver’s seat anymore.
It’s a move toward letting the companies run a robotaxi business without having to pay for staff to man the cars — fully eliminating the cost of a taxi driver. It remains unclear when the Chinese government would allow robotaxis to charge fares for rides without any human staff in the cars.”
Limitations
According to Engadget, “There are some limits to the permits. Driverless Apollo Go vehicles will ferry paying passengers around designated zones in Wuhan and Chongqing during daytime hours only. The service areas cover 13 square kilometers in Wuhan’s Economic & Technological Development Zone (WHDZ) and 30 square kilometers in Chongqing’s Yongchuan District. The WHDZ has been overhauled over the last year to support AV testing and operations.”
