China’s Baidu unveils autonomous driving ‘robot truck’ Xingtu
Baidu’s open-source autonomous driving platform Apollo has spawned Xingtu, an electric “robot truck”, as mainland China’s artificial intelligence and search engine giant revs up the development of next-generation vehicles.
A mass production model launched by Baidu subsidiary DeepWay, Xingtu will have a long-distance sensing capability of more than 1 kilometre and will achieve Level 3 (L3) autonomous driving on high-speed freight routes. L3 means drivers can safely take their attention off the road in certain traffic conditions, but the technology still requires human intervention.