Baidu updates its open-source autonomous driving platform

It's odd that the search engine company known as the "Google of China" says that its open-source autonomous driving platform Apollo is the "Android of the auto industry." But that's exactly what Baidu is trying to be with Apollo and it's racking up partners worldwide (including Ford, Daimler, NVIDIA and others) to make it a reality. At an event in Sunnyvale, California, the search company unveiled Apollo 1.5, its latest version of its autonomous driving platform. The new version supports HD maps, LiDAR, obstacle detection and deep learning technologies. All of which, like the rest of the platform, is open source and modular so developers can pick and choose what they want to use in their own systems. At some point a developer will have to contribute to the platform to access more of the data for their own needs.