apolloauto/apollo

Apollo is Baidu's open-source platform for building self-driving car software. It's the full technology stack needed to make a vehicle drive itself, from perceiving the environment with cameras, lidar (laser-based 3D sensors), and radar, to planning routes, making real-time driving decisions, and controlling the vehicle's steering, brakes, and throttle. The platform is designed for automotive companies, research institutions, and developers working on autonomous vehicle technology. It's not a finished product you deploy, it's a development and testing framework that teams build on top of. Think of it as the operating system for a self-driving car, you bring your own vehicle hardware and sensors, and Apollo provides the software architecture that makes them work together. Apollo has evolved through multiple versions from basic GPS waypoint following on closed tracks (version 1.0) to handling complex urban intersections, unprotected left turns, narrow residential streets, and highway driving at speed (versions 5.x and beyond). The platform currently requires serious hardware: a vehicle with drive-by-wire capability (electronic control of steering/brakes), a high-end GPU, and Linux server hardware, plus sensors that cost tens of thousands of dollars. For most non-technical founders and vibe coders, this is far outside the scope of something to deploy directly. Its relevance is more about understanding the landscape: this is one of the most significant open-source contributions to the autonomous driving space, used by dozens of car companies and research teams globally as a starting point for their own self-driving programs.