An important Joint Innovation Center for a 5G Intelligent Network was established at Tianjin University recently, in the wake of a tri-party cooperation agreement that was forged by Tianjin University, the Tianjin Branch of China Mobile Communications Corporation and DTmobile.

Officials said the center will help the three partners to cooperate in network research, technology applications and communications, among other things.

Together, they will aim to build an experimental platform for autonomous driving vehicles, deploy a 5G network, devise a network framework and shed light on the technology involved in autonomous vehicles, roads, networks and the Cloud system.

Officials said the center will release its scientific achievements in May every year.

Xie Hui, director of the Tianjin University Autonomous Driving Vehicle Research center, said the Joint Innovation Centre had already built a testing ground for 5G vehicular networking on the new campus of Tianjin University and carried out Vehicle to Vehicle research and Vehicle to Everything research.

"We are investigating building an open test area for autonomous vehicle driving and smart connected cars within Tiianjin Haihe Education Park," Xie said.

"Hopefully, the park will provide China's largest open testing ground for smart connected buses and become the pilot area for future urban traffic that applies intelligent unmanned technology.”