Smart cars: Microsoft to work with Baidu for technical advancement

Microsoft has announced that it is joining hands with Baidu to speed up the development of smart, connected and fully autonomous cars. "We're excited to partner with Baidu to take a giant step in helping automotive manufacturers and suppliers fully realize the promise of autonomous driving," a statement from Kevin Dallas, corporate vice president of Microsoft, said. "Today's vehicles already have an impressive level of sophistication when it comes to their ability to capture data. By applying our global cloud AI, machine learning, and deep neural network capabilities to that data, we can accelerate the work already being done to make autonomous vehicles safer," he added. Microsoft would be using its Azure cloud services along with Baidu, the largest search engine provider in China.