Microsoft-Baidu Self-Driving Partnership Joins BMW, Didi Chuxing In Taking On US Tech Giants

Autonomous driving is catching on globally even though some major work on the technology is still being done in the U.S. The latest company to join the global self-driving race is Microsoft, which has teamed up with its Chinese rival Baidu to spur the global adoption of self-driving.

“Today’s vehicles already have an impressive level of sophistication when it comes to their ability to capture data. By applying our global cloud AI, machine learning and deep neural network capabilities to that data, we can accelerate the work already being done to make autonomous vehicles safer,” Kevin Dallas, corporate vice-president, Microsoft said in the press release Tuesday.

Both companies are working on creating the background support for self-driving, including cloud infrastructure, software stack and other services which can support self-driving car functions.

Read: Baidu Working on Self-Driven Car, Bike

Baidu has set-up the Apollo self-driving platform, which the company claims can become the “Android” of the self-driving industry i.e. the company would provide open source software to self-driving car manufacturers just like Google provides to smartphone companies.

But Baidu and Microsoft aren’t the only ones involved in self-driving research and testing it globally. Another Chinese company, Didi Chuxing has reportedly set up an AI and self-driving lab in Mountain View, California. The company also raised $5.5 billion for its development of transportation technologies from investors.

It also hired Charlie Miller, a former Uber engineer known for his work on remotely controlled cars. He will be supervising transport safety and security at Didi. The company has also employed Jia Zhaoyin, as principal engineer on Google’s Waymo self-driving project.

The Russian tech company Yandex has also jumped into the fray and showcased its self-driven car in May. At the time, the company also announced its plans for starting a self-driven taxi service called Yandex.Taxi. It has developed its own mapping, navigation, computer vision and object detection technology for self-driven cars. The company claims that its technology is engineered to work in complex environments such as busy city traffic using machine learning, AI and the company’s own algorithms.

It is working towards creating level 5 autonomous technology i.e. fully autonomous self-driven cars, and claims that cars powered by the technology will hit the roads later this year.

Read: Yandex Developing Self-Driving Technology To Compete With Tesla, Waymo And Uber

BMW, the German carmaker is making self-driven cars in partnership with the semiconductor company Intel, which will use its chipsets to power the self-driven cars. The company’s self-driven cars are expected to go into full-scale service by 2021.

Even the Indian company, Tata Motors is also working on a self-driven car called Tata Elxsi, which will be equipped with Lidar radars, stereoscopic camera and ultrasonic sensors. An onboard computer will receive signals from the equipment and power the self-driving mechanism to control the steering and navigate the roads.

So, is the self-driving arena getting crowded with multiple companies investing in the technology? Not at all.

Self-driving technology in its current state needs legal norms, traffic regulations and even roads to match up with it. Global investment in the technology opens up multiple options for it. For example, self-driving tests in other countries may not face the same restrictions as they do in the U.S. where there is a requirement for a human driver to be present in the car at all times. That might provide carmakers the opportunity to expand the scope of their testing.