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Showing posts with label Baidu. Show all posts

Will elderly and disabled gain most from autonomous cars?

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The future of autonomous vehicles might give millions of elderly and disabled citizens a chance at driving, but new draft regulations released in December by the state of California point to a long battle for fully driverless cars on the road.
Google’s director of the self-driving project, Chris Urmson, said he was disappointed in the draft regulations, which state that the driver must be able to control the car at all times. This is similar to the current laws on autonomous vehicles, which Tesla have already implemented.

See Also: For self-driving future, fire the crash test dummies
Google will still be able to test its vehicles on driverless mode, but a driver is still required to sit in the vehicle. That is a low blow for the company, which might have been hoping for a bit of leeway this year as it prepares to commercialize its self-driving project.
Several organized groups called for a relaxation in the laws and a way for disabled people to control autonomous cars. “If there’s an autonomous car, there needs to be a means by which a blind person can operate that car as well,” said Parnell Diggs, board member of the National Federation of the Blind to Medill.

“It would behoove the auto industry to certainly keep the elderly and the disabled in mind, as a growing proportion of the American population are aging baby boomers,” said Kenneth Jon, researcher at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.


Autonomous cars can take down obstacles

Autonomous cars remove a lot of the issues some elderly people have in cars, like short sight and slow reactions. All of these improvements are for nought however, if regulations maintain that a driver needs to be inside the car and able to take command at all times.

Full autonomy might not come until 2020, according to Baidu, the Chinese company that is currently working on self-driving cars in Silicon Valley. Others, like Tesla, General Motors, and the PSA Group have similar predictions on when the market will be ready for driverless cars.
Until then, it looks like we’re stuck with highway self-driving and self-parking features coming to more cars.

China’s LeEco unveils its own concept self-driving electric car

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China’s LeEco unveiled its own self-driving electric car concept at a Beijing press conferenceearlier today, adding to the laundry list of products currently produced by the “Netflix of China”.

LeEco chief executive Jia Yueting demoed some of the self-driving capabilities at the event, including driving and parking. Yueting controlled the car through voice commands on a mobile device, a different approach to Google and Tesla that still use a touch interface.
See Also: Baidu wants self-driving cars on the roads by 2018

The car, named the LeSee, is still in concept stage, as far as we can tell. Yueting made no mention of specifications or price, but in the video teaser we got to see rear suicide doors and back seats that change shape to fit passengers bodies. Touchscreens are also fitted in the back seats, and Yueting said the car will feature face recognition and self-learning, though he did not demo this at the event.
We will hopefully get a clearer picture of the self-driving car at Beijing Auto Show on April 24, which LeEco are attending, according to Engadget.


Not LeEco’s first foray

It is not LeEco’s first foray into the self-driving market, it owns the startup Faraday Future, which introduced its self-driving concept car at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year.
For those that haven’t heard of LeEco — previously LeTV — the company started as an entertainment provider in China. It holds a large amount of copyright content for TV shows and movies. In the past few years, it has made significant investments in new technologies, like mobile, smart TVs, music, and cloud computing.

While the company hasn’t outright said it, the pushes into new hardware appear to be an attempt to create a ‘hardware-software-services’ ecosystem similar to Apple. That makes the move into self-driving cars less bizarre, as drivers will spend more time watching videos, listening to music, and messaging friends rather than driving in the future.

Baidu building a self-driving team in Silicon Valley

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The Chinese web search giant Baidu is looking to expand its autonomous car program to the United States by bringing a 100-person team to Silicon Valley. This puts it in the same space – and now, same neighborhood – as its closest American equivalent, Google.

Baidu isn’t a household name here in the United States, but in China, it is the go-to search engine for over 80% of its 1.35 billion citizens. It was also the first Chinese company to be listed on the NASDAQ-100 index, making it an easy company to compare to Google.
Like Google, Baidu has been branching out in recent years to social networking, mobile operating systems, and even self-driving cars.

See also: Baidu wants self-driving cars on the roads by 2018 


Baidu says the Silicon Valley team will be known as Autonomous Driving Unit-US, or ADU-US. It will focus on areas integral to self-driving car development, including planning, perception, control and systems. ADU-US will work alongside Baidu’s existing Silicon Valley-based teams, including Baidu Research.

Earlier this month, Tesla opened its doors to receive pre-orders for its yet-to-be-unveiled Model 3. It received over 325,000 pro-orders – many of which were made sight unseen – in just a few days. One of the primary drivers of interest in this vehicle was Tesla’s self-driving mode that enables you to take your hands off the wheel and enjoy the ride while the car changes lanes, turns, and navigates you to where you want to go.
With interest in autonomous vehicles this high, it’s no surprise that Baidu has decided to jump in and develop its own platform that it can then partner with manufacturers like BMW to bring to market.

“Baidu is fully committed to making self-driving cars a reality,” said Jing Wang, SVP of Baidu and General Manager of Baidu’s Autonomous Driving Unit. “Autonomous vehicles will save lives and make transportation more efficient. Baidu’s Silicon Valley car team will play a significant role in building the car of the future.”

Detroit Auto Show to launch an all-autonomous spin-off in 2017

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After swamping the Detroit Auto Show for the past two years, event directors have decided to debut an autonomous spin-off show in 2017, called
AutoMobiliD.
The event will be held in Cobo Center Atrium in Detroit, Michigan on Jan 8, according toBoston Free Press. The atrium offers a 120,000 square-foot space and indoor test track for manufacturers to preview self-driving capabilities to industry experts and fans of the motor companies in a controlled environment.


See Also: Volvo tests self-driving cars in China and Sweden
“AutoMobili-D will provide an international look at the ever-changing world of consumer mobility and the ecosystem of companies and innovations that are driving this exciting transformation,” said Sam Slaughter, 2017 NAIAS chairman. “AutoMobili-D will provide the ideal platform for B2B networking and thought-provoking demonstrations.”


The spin-off event comes at a time where auto shows are struggling to maintain a powerful spot in the industry. Regular manufacturers are starting to prefer livestreaming or virtual reality announcements to spending loads on a spot at an auto show. Autonomous cars are in a different zone however, as manufacturers preview one or two features instead of an entire car at auto events. Previews require test drivers and a lot of space, two things auto shows have in.



Detroit has always been the go-to auto show

“Just as NAIAS has served as the leading global venue for automakers to debut brand-defining vehicles, AutoMobili-D will be the go-to setting for automakers, suppliers and startups alike to unveil advanced technologies and initiatives that will move the transportation industry into the next century,” said Slaughter.
Next year, we might see the first iterations of “mind-off” autonomous cars, which require minimal human interaction to drive. We are already seeing NuTonomy potentially launch a taxi service in Singapore, Baidu preparing to launch a similar service in China, and Google setting their sights on driverless software on the roads by 2018.

Add to that General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, and Citroën all working on autonomous vehicles, and the Detroit autonomous show looks to be a packed event full of startups and big name brands.

Bitcoin Prices Plunge After China Cracks Down on Currency

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Bitcoin Prices Plunge After China Cracks Down on CurrencyBitcoins

The price of bitcoin surged to $1,000 last month, but it dipped far below that mark just as quickly.
Baidu, China's largest search engine, announced this week that it would no longer accept the digital currency as a form of payment, triggering a steep drop in the price of bitcoin. The announcement, which was posted on the Baidu website, followed a decision from China's central bank to prohibit financial institutions in the country from processing or insuring bitcoin transactions.

Baidu’s website-acceleration platform decided to suspend Bitcoin payment acceptance from Friday, as recent large fluctuations in Bitcoin’s value makes it unable to safeguard users’ interests,” Baidu said in a statement on its website, translated via Bloomberg.
The price of bitcoin, which hit $1,000 for the first time at the end of November and peaked at $1,200 on some exchanges shortly after, has since plummeted to the low $700-range. Its fluctuations can be seen in the chart, below, from Blockchain.info, which aggregates prices across exchanges:
Screen Shot 2013-12-08 at 10.57.46 AM
On BTC China, the country's largest bitcoin exchange that previously helped drive up the currency's price worldwide, the price of bitcoins dropped below $700 at one point, and is currently valued at around $775. The chart, below, from Bitcoincharts.com, shows the drop as measured in Chinese yuan.
Screen Shot 2013-12-08 at 11.22.40 AM

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