Huawei shows off driverless Porsche to be driven by smart phone

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Recently, Huawei unveiled its first driverless vehicle to be controlled with an AI-powered smart phone Mate 10 Pro.

According to the video Huawei released on its website, a Porsche Panamera ran forward quickly without any human in driving seat. Besides, the vehicle successfully bypassed a dog standing ahead who was detected by a Mate10 Pro that gave a “turning right” instruction immediately.

Andrew Garrihy, Chief Marketing Officer of Huawei Western Europe, proudly said that it only took them 5 weeks to let a Porsche Panamera to drive by itself.

Huawei names this driverless vehicle project as “RoadReader”. Unlike other driverless cars, the Porsche was controlled by a smart phone. The in-house AI chip of the Mate10 Pro made the vehicle not only “see”, but also “understand” the surroundings and recognize over 1,000 of various objects, such as cats, dogs, foods and other things and then take appropriate actions.

The smart phone maker stated that the “RoadReader” project has made a breakthrough in the application of target identification technology. It endows the AI facility with an ability of self-learning and has tested the speed and performance of this AI technology.

Driverless vehicle is becoming a hot industry that plentiful automakers and tech providers flock to. Huawei, as a leading tech company in China, is no exception. Its rich customer resources in communication and internet of vehicle areas and the advanced design and manufacturing ability of AI chip made Huawei realize a breakthrough ahead of many other competitors.

As early as October of 2016, there was information saying that Huawei will team up with Magna to jointly manufacture vehicles. The Canadian global automotive supplier has impressive achievements in such areas as bodywork, chassis and powertrain.

In September last year, Shenzhen released two certain testing roads for driverless bus which was backed up by Huawei to some extent.

Most driverless vehicles’ development currently relies on the computer system of purpose-built chips developed by third party technology providers, such as NVIDIA and Mobileye (acquired by Intel). However, Huawei has developed its self-owned AI chip Kirin 970 that is available in its smart phone Mate 10, recommended by the company as “Intelligent Machines”.

Now Huawei is extending its unique merit in AI chip to the use in driverless vehicles.