Baidu, which is deeply engaged in autonomous driving, has ushered in a critical moment. According to Apollo official news, on July 30, Baidu and Flextronics held the Apollo Computing Unit (ACU) mass production off-line launch ceremony at Flextronics Suzhou Wuzhong factory, which means that the world’s first mass-produced autonomous driving computing platform ACU was officially offline.
This mass-produced ACU hardware platform will be the first to be used in the Apollo Valet Parking (AVP) autonomous parking product jointly developed by Baidu and WM Motor in the second half of this year. WM Motor will also become the first Chinese car company to mass-produce AVP autonomous parking solutions.
Wang Yunpeng, general manager of Baidu’s autonomous driving technology department, said that the mass production of ACU indicates that Baidu has significantly enhanced its capabilities in vehicle-level functional safety, commercialization of autonomous driving products, and software and hardware supply chain management. In this cooperation, Flextronics and Baidu have complemented their resources and technologies and formed an effective technology alliance.
It is reported that Baidu and Flextronics signed a strategic cooperation agreement in June 2018 to jointly provide comprehensive, systematic and reliable solutions for autonomous driving, intelligent network, and intelligent transportation. In the process of cooperation with Baidu Apollo team in the ACU mass production project, Flextronics leveraged the Silicon Valley Innovation Center and the world’s four major R&D centers in the L4 autonomous taxi (Robotaxi) project experience and based on the suggestions and architectural requirements of Baidu Apollo experts, Provide an innovative ADM-assisted development business model and provide Baidu with customized hardware development, diagnostic software development, industrial design, thermal management structure design, test verification, as well as supply chain integration optimization, production line design, and large-scale manufacturing.
The landing of models equipped with the ACU hardware platform can realize Baidu’s AVP autonomous parking solution, enabling remote car retrieval, automatic search for parking spaces, autonomous parking and other operations through mobile terminals such as mobile phones. The implementation of autonomous parking will be an important part of Baidu’s realization of L4 autonomous driving technology.
