(Yicai Global) May 9 – Shanghai's Lin'gang Area will build the first pilot demonstration area for unmanned driving systems in China, encompassing land, sea, and air scenarios, to offer artificial intelligence companies a comprehensive development environment, state online news outlet The Paper reported.

About 20 smart and networked vehicle, unmanned ship and drone companies penned a cooperation agreement with the demonstration area's operator to obtain the first licenses at its opening yesterday.

The complex's first phase will see construction of a 4.7-kilometer intelligent and networked vehicle test road, closed test sites, partially-open road test areas, a square-kilometer unmanned ship test area,and two low-altitude multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flying airspaces with an extent of 6 kilometers and a height of 200 meters, per planning.

Lin'gang started to cultivate artificial intelligence as a leading industry three years ago. It has attracted several renowned AI companies of the ilk of Iflytek Co., Cambricon Technologies Corp., Horizon Robotics Inc., TrunkTech and SenseTime Group Ltd.

The area lies in the southeast corner of Shanghai where the Yangtze River estuary meets Hangzhou Bay.

Editor: Ben Armour