Baidu is taking on Google with its own self-driving car

Google took the wraps off its self-driving cars in May, and now Baidu — commonly known as China’s Google — has also revealed that it is working on a similar project. Kai Yu, Baidu’s deputy director of its Institute of Deep Learning, told TNW in an interview that the company doesn’t view it as a driverless car, as he still envisions a driver being in control. “This is actually an intelligent assistant collecting data from road situations and then operating locally… We don’t call this a driverless car. I think a car should be helping people, not replacing people, so we call this a highly autonomous car,” Yu told us. Technically, however, the car can actually operate without the driver controlling it under certain situations. “Philosophically we have a fundamental difference to look at this type of things. I think in the future, a car should not totally replace the driver but should really give the driver freedom. Freedom means the car is intelligent enough to operate by itself, like a horse, and make decisions under different road situations.Whenever the driver wants to resume control, you can do that. It’s like riding on a horse, rather than just sitting in a car where you only have a button.”