The Beijing Winter Olympics are underway, and many new technological changes that occurred during the torch relay before the opening are also well known.
According to reports, on February 2, at the torch relay event held in Beijing's Shougang Park, the self-driving car became the first robot torchbearer in the history of the centennial Olympic Games, completing an 800-meter torch relay.
In the torch relay activities held in Beijing Winter Olympic Park on the same day, amphibious robots and underwater robots also appeared, which was the first time in the history of the Olympic Games that robots passed torches to robots.
It is understood that the self-driving car that serves as the torchbearer comes from Baidu, and on February 9, in the Baidu Apollo Science and Technology Park in the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone, the "torchbearer car robot" was unveiled for the first time.
Compared with ordinary cars, the appearance of this self-driving car is very different, the whole is like a large boxy box, the front of the car is wider and higher, and there is a circular snap in front of the right door for placing the torch.
In addition, compared to the more well-known L4 level of automatic driving, this car has a higher degree of automatic driving, so there is no steering wheel design.
The relevant person in charge of Baidu said: "It can be understood as a car robot. It participated as a robot in the torch relay of this Winter Olympics. ”
Wei Dong, vice president and chief safety operation officer of Baidu Intelligent Driving Business Group, revealed that since the layout of automatic driving technology in 2013, Baidu Apollo has grown into one of the most active autonomous driving open platforms, with the actual road measurement mileage of urban roads exceeding 21 million kilometers, and Baidu's autonomous driving travel service platform "Radish Run" plans to expand to 65 cities by 2025 and 100 cities by 2030.