A Chinese tech conglomerate, Baidu has unveiled its first RoboCar and a RoboTaxi Mobile platform at the Baidu World 2021 Technology Conference.

The mission of the virtual conference is to illustrate the advancements in AI and its application in daily life. The theme was “For the era, we love, for the sea of stars.” The event started at 9:30 AM Beijing Time on August 18. Its live updates were made available through Twitter and other social media.

Baidu’s RoboCar is a prototype presented at the conference, which revealed the company’s vision for autonomous vehicles. The RoboCar’s doors open like wings, and it had a big monitor on its interior. Of course, the RoboCar is fully autonomous and can respond to voice commands. It learns from the external environment continuously.

Baidu already operates an autonomous taxi service in some cities in China that includes Guangzhou and Beijing. This taxi service is available through an app called Apollo Go in the serviceable areas. Now, They have upgraded the taxi service and rebranded it as “Luobo Kuaipao.”

It appears that Autonomous Vehicles would hit the $2 trillion market worldwide by 2030. Earlier, Plus Autonomous Truck has completed a demo run on a newly built highway in China.

Similarly, Hyundai had launched its Autonomous RoboShuttle in South Korea.

Wei Dong, vice chairman of Baidu’s Intelligent driving group, says that the organization hopes to have mass public, commercial availability in some cities in the subsequent years. It is still unknown that how Baidu will charge for the RoboTaxi carrier.

Baidu’s RoboCar is a prototype, and the company gave no word on whether it would be mass-produced. The up-gradation of its RoboTaxi service is its attempt to scale up its autonomous services on a commercial level.

Also, Baidu conducted a poll on Twitter to vote for the favorite product showcased in its conference.

Baidu also unveiled four new pieces of hardware, including a smart screen and television that includes Xiaodu, the company’s AI voice assistant, which is yet another expansion initiative for the company. 

In June, it is to be noted that Baidu introduced a collaboration with kingdom-owned automaker BAIC institution to build 1,000 driverless cars over the next three years.