China’s Baidu launches AI model simulating road environment for robotaxis

China’s Baidu launched Apollo World on Tuesday, an AI system designed to simulate real-world environments for training robotaxis and predict how they evolve, as automakers race to cut the cost of developing autonomous vehicles.

Apollo World can generate “up to 100,000 km” (62,000 miles) of simulated driving daily, equivalent to about three years of real-world testing by a safety-driver-equipped autonomous vehicle, Baidu said. The system is capable of producing real-time multimodal data streams, such as camera and lidar observations, enabling self-driving systems to directly sense and navigate simulated environments.