Chinese telecoms company Huawei has become the ‘first’ mobile device maker in the world to use an AI-powered smartphone to drive a car.

As part of its ‘RoadReader’ project, Huawei used its Mate 10 Pro smartphone to transform a Porsche Panamera into an autonomous vehicle that understands its surroundings and identifies what’s there, as opposed to just seeing obstacles. This meant it could distinguish between ‘1,000s of different objects’ and make a manoeuvring choice based on what it recognises.

The object recognition technology already exists in the Mate 10 Pro to help people taking pictures with the device.

“Our smartphone is already outstanding at object recognition. We wanted to see if in a short space of time we could teach it to not only drive a car, but to use its AI capabilities to see certain objects, and be taught to avoid them” said Andrew Garrihy, CMO for Huawei Western Europe. “If our technology is intelligent enough to achieve this in just 5 weeks – what else can it make possible?”