Chinese internet giant Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) has introduced driverless robotaxi services to the public in Beijing, testing out the autonomous service ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022.
This is considered China's very first self-sufficient vehicle service, during which users are able to call a robotaxi behind the wheel without any type of safety driver there. Essentially, this particular action will signify a step on the commercialization of autonomous driving.
The program will officially be introduced in Beijing's Shougang Park, which is one of the venues for the Winter Olympics, and will deliver visitors back and forth from the games. In order to get the vehicles to start working, the "Start the Journey" button must be pressed, which ascertains that seat belts are fastened and doors are shut. The trip only starts after all the passenger safety protocol checks are finished. There is no safety driver at the helm, and so the 5G Remote Driving Service is always there to permit human operators to remotely obtain access to vehicles.
At Beijing Shougang Park, robotaxis will be able to bring users to sports halls, work areas, coffee shops, and hotels. Throughout the upcoming Winter Olympics, the Apollo robotaxis will be there to offer shuttle services for athletes and staff.
"Introducing unmanned services is an indispensable stage for the commercialization of autonomous driving. Today, we are opening the fully driverless robotaxi services in Beijing for the public, which we achieved only after conducting countless scalable driverless tests in many cities over a long period of time," said Yunpeng Wang, vice president and general manager of autonomous driving at Baidu, in a press release.
Many other companies are racing to compete with one another in order to develop brand new types of artificial intelligence. It will remain a mystery as to which one will be most successful, but first, the nature of the service needs to be appropriately tried and tested.