The tie-up of Baidu and Geely will focus on autonomous driving, intelligent furniture, e-commerce and so on.
Image credit: Geely Wechat account
During the 2019 Baidu Create AI Developer Conference today, Robin Li (Li Yanhong, 李彦宏), founder and CEO of Baidu, announced the company’s future cooperation with car maker Geely (吉利).
The tie-up of the two giants will focus on autonomous driving, intelligent furniture, e-commerce and so on. At the conference, Robin Li made a video call to Li Shufu (李书福), chairman of Geely Holding Group, by issuing voice commands to “Xiaoduzaijia (小度在家)” (an AI assistant developed by Baidu). And Li Shufu responded from inside a Geely car equipped with “Xiaoduchezai (小度车载)” (an AI system designed for cars).
Starting with Geely Boyue Pro, a compact sport utility vehicle that was officially launched today, all Geely cars will be equipped with an intelligent interactive system named GKUI19 that is supported by Baidu AI.
Founded in 1996, Geely Auto is a subsidiary of Geely Holding Group, which purchased Volvo in 2010. According to the company, Geely Auto sold out over 1.5 million vehicles in 2018. Besides Geely, the company also possesses a relatively high-end sub-brand called Lynk & Co (领克).
In April 2017, Baidu launched an autonomous driving project called “Apollo”, culminating in the creation of Xiaoduchezai. According to Li Zhenyu (李震宇), vice president of Baidu and general manager of Baidu’s intelligent driving group, Apollo has covered 2 million kilometers in the L4 test of city road autonomous driving on Metropolitan roads after two years.
Apart from Geely, Baidu has also entered into cooperation with many other renowned brands like Ford, Great Wall Motors (长城汽车), Honda and so on.
At the conference, Li, CEO of Baidu, also detailed the company’s progress in “valet parking”, a concept he himself put forward at the Baidu World Conference last year. By using a Baidu application, car owners can remotely control their vehicles to avoid obstacles and find a place to park in the parking lot.