The mission of Baidu’s Autonomous Driving Unit (ADU) is to develop vehicles capable of sensing and navigating without human input. Based in Beijing and in Silicon Valley, ADU is part of Baidu’s Intelligent Driving Group (IDG) headed by Dr. Qi Lu, Baidu’s COO and Group President, as the general manager. IDG combines Baidu’s Autonomous Driving Unit, Intelligent Vehicle Unit, and CarLife with a mission to accelerate auto industry upgrade in AI era.

ADU brings together a group of high caliber talent to work on audacious goals – commercializing autonomous driving by 2018 and achieving mass production by 2020. ADU is developing autonomous driving technologies at Level 4 automation, per the NHTSA definition. ADU leverages Baidu’s world-class capabilities in the areas of artificial intelligence, deep learning, big data, advanced hardware, and high definition maps.