Keynote Presentation

Ya-Qin ZHANG
President, Baidu Inc.

Mon - 16 Dec 2019 | 09:45 - 10:30 | Parisian #7103

"Advances in Autonomous Driving"

Abstract

The automotive and transportation industry is going through a tectonic shift in the next decade with the advent of Connectivity, Automation, Sharing, and Electrification (CASE). Autonomous driving presents a historical opportunity to transform the academic, technological, and industrial landscape with advanced sensing and actuation, high definition mapping, new machine learning algorithms, smart planning and control, increasing computing powers, and new infrastructure with 5G, cloud and edge computing. Indeed, we have witnessed unprecedented innovation and activities in the past five years in R&D, investment, joint ventures, road tests and commercial trials, from auto makers, tier-ones, and new forces from the internet and high-tech industries.
Baidu has been in the frontier of this transformation with its leadership in AI and search technology, cloud and mega-scale computing infrastructure and data centers, high definition mapping and big data capabilities, and first commercial trials. More importantly, Baidu spearheaded Apollo in 2017 with an open, inclusive, and collaborative approach to solve the most challenging and complex problem in our industry. Apollo has since become the largest and most vibrant commercial platform and ecosystem in the world with over 130 global partners and tens of thousands of developers.
In this talk, I will speak about this historical opportunity and challenges from technological, industrial and policy perspectives. I will address some of the core controversial and critical issues in the advancement of autonomous driving: open vs closed, Lidar vs cameras, progressive L2-L3-L4 vs new L4, autonomous capabilities vs V2X, Robotaxi vs vertical, China vs global, automakers vs new players, and the evolutional path and end game.

Dr. Ya-Qin Zhang serves as the President of Baidu Inc. for 5 years (2014.09-2019.10). Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) is a leading Internet company in search, mobile Internet, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, providing internet services to over 2 Billion people around the world, employs over 40,000 people in 15 countries.

Prior to joining Baidu in 2014, Zhang served as Microsoft's Corporate Vice President in Redmond, USA and Beijing, China. Over his 16 year tenure at Microsoft, he has taken various key positions, including the Managing Director of Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA), Chairman of Microsoft China, Corporate Vice President of Mobile and Embedded Products, and Microsoft Asia-Pacific R&D Chairman. He built one of the world premier R&D centers with over 3000 scientists and engineers, in multimedia, computer vision, AI/machine learnings, speech recognition and machine translations. He was the Director of Multimedia laboratory of Sarnoff Corp in Princeton, NJ (now SRI) from 1995-1998, and a Senior member of technical staff for the GTE Labs (now Verizon) in Waltham, MA (from 1990-1994)

Zhang was recently inducted to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019, one of the highest distinctions in the fields of arts and natural/social sciences. He was inducted to the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE) as the only foreign Fellow in 2017, and became an IEEE Fellow in 1997 at age 31 as the youngest Fellow of the organization’s 100+ year history at the time. He is one of the top scientists in digital video and multimedia, with 558 papers in leading international conferences and journals, 62 granted US patents, and 12 books. His research and invention in video coding, motion estimation, rate control, and media streaming has been widely used in commercial HDTV products, internet video services, and MPEG/H.26X international standards. He has received many prestigious academic, technological, and industrial awards, including the IEEE centennial medal, IEEE industry pioneer award, IEEE Richard Merwin Medal, over a dozen best paper awards of various IEEE transactions and journals.

Zhang runs one of the largest technology companies in the world. He was named one of the top 10 CEOs in Asia, 50 global shapers, Executive of the year, IT innovator leader award by IT Times, Business Week, CNBC, Global business and Vision magazine. He served on the Board of Directors of five public companies. He is on the industry board of United Nation Development Program (UNDP), and received UN’s special award for sustainable development in 2016. He is the Chairman of world’s largest open autonomous driving platform “Apollo” alliance with over 130 global partners. He has been a leading champion of innovation and globalization, and a frequent feature speaker in global forums including APEC, Davos World Economic Forum, United Nations, and Bo’Ao Asia Forum.