Baidu, NVIDIA enter self-driving car alliance

Chinese internet giant Baidu and GPU maker NVIDIA have teamed up to use artificial intelligence in the creation of a cloud-to-car autonomous car platform for local Chinese and global car makers.

The partnership combines Baidu’s cloud platform and mapping technology with NVIDIA’s self-driving computing platform to develop solutions for HD maps, Level 3 autonomous vehicle control and automated parking.

“We’re going to bring together the technical capabilities and the expertise in AI and the scale of two world-class AI companies to build the self-driving car architecture from end-to-end, from top-to-bottom, from the cloud to the car,” NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said.

NVIDIA and Baidu have a long history of working together on AI. Using GPUs, Baidu researchers such as Andrew Ng have achieved some of the key breakthroughs that have made the modern AI boom possible, spawning hundreds of startups over the past few years.

Amidst the growing excitement over the future of AI, Baidu and NVIDIA continue to share a common goal of using AI for the good of society.

“We can start applying these capabilities to solve the grand challenges of AI, one of which is intelligent machines. One of the intelligent machines we would like to build in the future is the self-driving car,” said Huang.

He said that meant making driving safer, significantly reducing the number of traffic fatalities, while making transportation accessible to all — including the disabled, elderly and children.

Developing a fully autonomous car is an end-to-end systems problem — from the in-car supercomputer, to AI algorithms, to an always-updated 3D map in the cloud, said Huang.

The solution is expected to be available to local Chinese automakers as well as global brands.