Baidu Beats Waymo in California Robomobile Autonomy Rating

The California Department of Motor Vehicles publishes a robotic vehicle autonomy report every year . The list is compiled on the basis of a multitude of data on the intervention of operators in the operation of autonomous vehicles.

It is not necessary to be surprised that such a report is published in California - this is where the maximum concentration of robomobiles is. And all because the state has very loyal legislation that allows testing cars with AI to drive along public roads.

Not only are Robotaxi services allowed here, but it is also allowed to test cars without people in the cabin. True, rarely and on specially allocated sections of the route. Accordingly, companies that conduct tests send reports on their work (the number of incidents on the roads, the intervention of human drivers in the operation of cars, etc.) to officials. If this is not done, then the latter may revoke the license to work with robomobiles. By the way, this is not an empty threat, in 2019 two companies lost their licenses at once.

So, it turned out that the cars of the Chinese concern Baidu are much less demanding on the presence of a driver-operator in the cabin than robocars of other manufacturers, including Waymo from Google. Baidu drivers take over the control of robocars about once every 29 thousand kilometers. During the year, the company's cars drove along the roads of California 161 thousand kilometers, and during all this time, drivers intervened only six times.

In second place in the ranking of autonomy - Waymo robocars. The drivers of this company needed to intervene in the trip offline once every 21.3 thousand kilometers. Next in the ranking are Cruise with 19.7 thousand km without human intervention and AutoX with 17.2 thousand km.

Interestingly, Baidu was able to dramatically improve the work of its autopilot. In a previous report, company drivers interfered with robocars every 330 km.



Well, at the end of the rating is Box Bot with a score of 570 meters and Toyota with a similar achievement - its drivers had to influence the autopilot every kilometer.

Far not all participants in the industry agree that the ranking shows real results. According to experts, each company itself sets the rules when the driver should intervene in the operation of robocars. In addition, the result largely depends on which roads the cars go on. It’s one thing - a little-visited suburban highway, where one turn occurs a hundred kilometers, and quite another - the streets of the city.

By the way, at the moment, Baidu robomobiles have traveled about 2 million kilometers in 13 cities of different countries.

In Russia, the adaptation of robomobiles is somewhat slower than in the United States, but there is still progress, and noticeable. So, already from March 1, the number of regions where it is allowed to test robomobiles is increasing. There will be 13 of them, there used to be only 2. Plus, the number of test sites is increasing, where you can check the performance of autonomous machines.