Following its designation by the US as a threat to national security, Shenzhen-based Huawei is targeting new growth areas such as transport.
Huawei is running a pilot project for autonomous vehicle road networks in China.
On a four-kilometer (2.5-mile) road in the city of Wuxi in Jiangsu province, a self-driving bus travels back and forth, making stops, swerving past obstacles, accelerating and decelerating, based on information it constantly receives from its surroundings.
Embedded in the road, traffic lights, street signs and other infrastructure are sensors, cameras and radars that talk with the vehicle.
The site, used by telecom-equipment giant Huawei Technologies and partners, is part of China's first national project for intelligent and connected vehicles. The country wants to make traffic smoother and safer.
"Autonomous driving is an irresistible trend, but any isolated vehicle alone can't nail it. The only solution is to get more information from the roads," Jiang Wangcheng, a president at Huawei's information and communications technology business, said in an interview with NDTV.
Codenamed X-Bus, the vehicle is linked to a transportation-control network that sees and decides everything that happens on the test road. The communication is two-way: the bus constantly sends information to the network and can make requests such as favorable traffic lights to help it stay on schedule. Though the bus is largely autonomous, a human safety driver sits behind the wheel and is ready to take control if needed.
Instead of making a smart car of its own — billionaire founder Ren Zhengfei and other top executives have said that isn't the intention — Huawei wants to provide the communications equipment and software required for an intelligent-vehicle revolution.
While wide-scale use of such systems is still years away, technology companies around the globe are making progress. Amazon's Zoox project won approval in September to test autonomous cars on public roads without a safety driver. News about Apple mulling over a self-driving car for 2024 sent its shares near record highs last month. Alphabet's self-driving cars have been roaming on American roads for years.
In China, autonomous cars from search-engine giant Baidu drive on the roads of Beijing suburbs. Chip startups such as Horizon Robotics and Shanghai Westwell Lab Information Technology are testing auto-driving technologies with the help of AI processors and algorithms.
