Americans may be seeing self-driving cars on roads across the U.S. pretty soon. Contrary to other autonomous cars being tested in the country right now, these cars would not be from a Western tech firm. Rather, the vehicles would be emblazoned with the insignia of China's search giant Baidu.
The firm, which is widely considered China's answer to the West's Google, has been developing technologies that would be used for autonomous vehicles for quite some time now. Chief Baidu Scientist Andrew Ng has even stated that the technology is already there and that plans are currently underway to test the company's self-driving cars on American streets.
"The [artificial intelligence] is good enough where the changes to infrastructure are modest. Maybe in the distant future, we could make it drive like a human driver, but not in two years," he said.
Baidu has stated that if the road tests are successful, it would attempt to roll out the first fleet of consumer-ready self-driving vehicles in China by 2018. With the Chinese firm's ambitious schedule, it would seem like Baidu is attempting to go head-to-head against its Western counterpart, Google, in the race for the development of self-driving technologies.
While largely unknown in the West, Baidu is one of the world's most prominent tech companies, practically dominating the search market in China. Baidu is similar to Google in that it has expanded its range of operations through the years. Of course, among these would be the development of self-driving technologies.
Back in 2014, Baidu actually struck a deal with German automaker BMW in order to develop self-driving vehicles. The German carmaker stated at the time that the project was a means for designing and developing technologies that would provide "accident-free mobility." The project was also aimed at enhancing comfort and efficiency for drivers on the road.
Indeed, the age of self-driving vehicles does seem to be getting closer, and it looks like it would be an age where roads are generally safer. Just recently, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) lauded the commitment of a number of automakers on equipping their cars with automatic emergency braking. For Ng, such things are no problem for autonomous vehicles at all.
"Car crashes kill more than 3,000 people a day. Autonomous cars will affordably reduce this grim death toll. We have a moral imperative to urgently bring them to fruition. Each day's delay is another 3,000 deaths, another 3,000 families getting that dreaded phone call," he said.
