Xiaomi's autonomous driving team has over 500 staff members

Beijing (Gasgoo)- Chinese tech giant Xiaomi’s autonomous driving team has grown to over 500 employees, Lei Jun, founder and chairman of Xiaomi, disclosed on August 11th.

Photo credit: Xiaomi

Xiaomi plans to deploy an autonomous driving fleet of 140 test vehicles, preliminarily, to conduct nationwide R&D and validation works. By 2024, the company aims to stand among major players in this field.

According to the chairman, Xiaomi has formulated a technology strategy regarding proprietary full-stack algorithms, which covers the cover areas of autonomous driving, including perception, prediction, high-precision location, planning, and control. The company decided to built its own data-closed-loop system to effectively drive the iteration of core algorithms and products. Lei Jun disclosed, the company has achieved quite a bit of progress.

Photo credit: Xiaomi

In a video clip shown by the company, Xiaomi’s autonomous driving test vehicle realized such capabilities as making autonomous U-turn without protection, bypassing accident vehicle, stopping for pedestrians, circling roundabouts, autonomous parking and charging, etc. 

Lei Jun said that Xiaomi plans to put in RMB3.3 billion ($489.222 million) into autonomous driving R&D, and is actively recruiting talents in the field. The existing 500-people team also include employees from DeepMotion, the autonomous driving startup it acquired earlier.