Baidu unveils Apollo Lite Level 4 vision-based autonomous driving solution

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- China's Internet giant Baidu announced the level 4 autonomous driving vision-based closed-loop solution designed for urban roads, the Apollo Lite, at the CVPR 2019 (the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition).

(Photo source: Baidu Apollo)

According to Wang Liang, head of Baidu Apollo Technical Committees, the Apollo Lite is so far China's only level 4 (fully autonomous driving) urban road-specific vision-based sensing solution that can process a huge amount of data generated by 10 cameras at a speed of 200 frames per second. The maximum frame drop for each camera is under 5‰. Using the solution, vehicular sensors are able to achieve the 360-degree in-time environment perception and extend its head-on detection range as far as 240 meters.

Based on the previous technical R&D and the iteration of road tests for the first half of 2019, the new sensing system that is composed of 10 cameras will help Baidu's vehicles to conduct the end-to-end closed-loop autonomous driving on urban roads sans high-beam rotatable lidar, said Wang Liang.

Baidu revealed that the Apollo Lite has been tested on multiple road sections in Beijing and reached the world-leading level in terms of number of vehicles tested, cumulative testing mileage and vehicle's performance in closed-loop autonomous driving on urban roads.

This panoramic-view perception solution features relatively low cost, and is also compatible with ADAS applications.

The Apollo Lite's unveiling comes after the January launch of Apollo 3.5, the latest version of Baidu's Apollo open source autonomous driving platform and the Apollo Enterprise, which is designed to provide a series of “tailor-made intelligent driving products and solutions” for vehicle fleets.