A man’s choice to solve the hardest problem for the future of mobility
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Zhong Hua, SVP at WeRide.ai told us his personal story from failing this first medial AI startup to joining a mission that any engineer could never resist.
This article is translated from the original Chinese post on ZhiHu.
In 1990, in order to welcome the Asian Games, Beijing built an 11-kilometer secondary road on the east side of the Summer Palace and named it Zhichun Road. Lenovo and Sina in the 1990s started here. Knowing the spring road, knowing the spring of China’s Internet.
Today, there are still important innovative companies on both sides of Zhichun Road. Countless outstanding young people gather here to watch, chase, and create their own dream. WeRide’s Beijing branch was established here.
Facing the bustling street of Zhichun Road, with floor-to-ceiling windows, sitting in front of the large-screen display is WeRide Technology SVP Zhong Hua. He told us that an important goal in the first half of 2019 is to recruit Beijing’s best AI engineers to fill up the Beijing office.
WeRide was founded in Silicon Valley two years ago and is now headquartered in Guangzhou. Relying on first-class autonomous vehicle technology solutions, leading autonomous vehicle independent modification capabilities and rich autonomous driving road test experience, it has become one of China’s leading L4 autonomous driving companies.
Zhong Hua, who came from Guangzhou to Beijing to interview candidates, looks no different from other “code farmers”, wearing a black hoodie with the “WeRide” logo and khaki slacks, speaking with a bit of old Beijing’s ridicule and carelessness. But as soon as he talked about technology, he was energized, his eyes started gleaming, and his speed of conversation accelerated.
As an AI engineer, Zhong Hua’s has a solid resume. He graduated with a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, under the tutelage of Takeo Kanade, the global leader in computer vision. Zhong Hua was the earliest employee of Microsoft Research Asia. He once worked at Google and Siemens Research Institute and Chief Architect of Autonomous Driving in China. In more than three hours of dialogue, Zhong Hua frankly shared the gains and losses and reflections of…