It might not look like much, but this wobbly self-driving bicycle is a symbol of growing Chinese expertise in advanced chip design.
Look, no hands: The bike not only balances itself but steers itself around obstacles and even responds to simple voice commands. But it’s the brains behind the bike that matter. It uses a new kind of computer chip, called Tianjic, that was developed by Luping Shi and colleagues at Tsinghua University, a top academic institution in Beijing.
Two in one: The Tianjic chip features a hybrid design that seeks to bring together two different architectural approaches to computing: a conventional, von Neumann design and a neurologically inspired one. The two architectures are used in cooperation to run artificial neural networks for obstacle detection, motor and balance control, and voice recognition, as well as conventional software.
Comments are closed.