Asia Tech Wire (May 16) -- Apollo, the self-driving arm of Chinese Internet giant Baidu, released the world's first large model supporting level 4 autonomous driving, Apollo ADFM (Autonomous Driving Foundation Model), in Wuhan on Thursday.

According to Baidu Apollo, ADFM is a new type of autonomous driving system built on large model technology, aiming to improve the safety and generalization ability of autonomous driving.

Baidu claimed that the safety performance of this model exceeds that of a human driver by more than ten times, and can realize effective coverage in complex scenarios across the entire city.

By utilizing this large model of autonomous driving, Baidu's robotaxi service platform Apollo Go has successfully coped with the diverse road conditions in Wuhan, and currently serves nearly half of Wuhan's citizens.

Meanwhile, Baidu has also unveiled the sixth-generation Apollo Go unmanned vehicle, which features its sixth-generation intelligent system solution and costs just 200,000 yuan.

The company plans to put about 1,000 unmanned vehicles in Wuhan within this year.