Han Ximin

    ximhan@126.com

    DIDI Chuxing on Thursday officially launched Didi Labs in Mountain View, California, to primarily focus on AI-based security and intelligent driving technologies, with the aim of attracting top engineering talents to advance the transformation of the global transportation industry.

    Building on rich data and fast-evolving AI analytics, the company will be working with cities and towns to build intelligent transportation ecosystems for the future.

    Didi Labs will be led by Dr. Fengmin Gong, vice president of Didi Research Institute, while dozens of leading data scientists and researchers have joined the team, including Charlie Miller, one of the world’s foremost automobile security experts. Current projects span the areas of cloud-based security, deep learning, human-machine interaction, computer vision and imaging, as well as intelligent driving technologies.

    Bob Zhang, Didi’s CTO, called for the top minds in AI and intelligent driving researchers to join the company at the launch of the Didi-Udacity Self-Driving Car Challenge at Udacity’s Intersect conference in Mountain View on Thursday. The challenge is the world’s first open-source self-driving competition in which player teams are invited to create an Automated Safety and Awareness Processing Stack (ASAPS) to improve general safety metrics for human and intelligent driving scenarios based on real data. Five finalist teams will have an opportunity to run their code on Udacity’s self-driving cars, compete for a grand prize of US$100,000, and work with Didi’s intelligent driving team.