by Xinhua writers Hu Tao, Wu Wei, Su Xiaozhou

CHANGSHA, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) is transforming modern life and work by continuously integrating the smart power of burgeoning intelligent technologies.

The BDS is injecting new vitality into the rapidly growing intelligent technology market, involving every aspect of daily life, from food, housing and transportation to modern work practices, across scenarios on the ground, in the skies and even in space.

Located in central China's Hunan Province, Zhuzhou City serves as a pilot zone for BDS-enabled autonomous driving, testing a range of smart applications such as self-driving buses, sanitation vehicles and unmanned delivery services.

The city has also taken the lead in offering a BDS-powered ride-hailing bus service, an innovative and intelligent mode of public transport that operates without fixed routes or stops and flexibly meets real-time, customized travel demands.

Through a WeChat app on their smartphones, passengers in Zhuzhou can easily track the location of these buses and book rides by selecting their preferred pick-up and drop-off points from nearly 100 designated virtual stops across the urban area.

This innovative ride-hailing bus service, once imaginable only in science fiction, has become part of everyday life for Zhuzhou residents. It is also highly affordable, costing just 2 yuan (about 0.28 U.S. dollars) per ride or 30 yuan for unlimited monthly travel.

This "demand response + dynamic ordering" function of this service relies on the BDS and multiple intelligent technologies such as Internet of Vehicles and big data algorithms, which together enable real-time tracking of buses as well as accurate and flexible route scheduling, according to an institute under the Zhuzhou-based Chinese automaker CRRC Electric Vehicle Co., Ltd.

Since its launch in October 2024, the BDS-powered ride-hailing bus service in Zhuzhou has served about 144,000 passengers, covering a total distance of more than 240,000 km.

In fact, BeiDou has become an integral part of modern life through the rapid growth of related intelligent tech, guiding people as they navigate time-saving routes, discover new dining spots, share real-time locations with friends, hail taxis, order takeout, and much more.

BDS satellite navigation and positioning technologies are also expanding their impact across a growing range of products in smartphones, wearable devices, shared mobility, and other areas, according to a report on China's BDS industry development.

In 2024, smartphone shipments in China reached 294 million units, of which around 288 million featured BDS positioning, making smartphones the largest consumer application of BDS. At the same time, wearable devices emerged as the second-largest market for BDS applications.

According to a forecast by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, by 2028, annual shipments of wearable devices in China supporting BDS services are expected to reach 47.95 million units.

BDS is also being integrated into key industries, leveraging its unique advantages of high precision, all-weather operation, and global coverage.

The high-precision positioning, speed and time references provided by BDS are the key support for AI to understand the complexity of the real world, said Liu Zhenfei, chairman of Amap, one of China's largest navigation platforms.

Liu noted that BDS is enabling Amap to evolve from a simple navigation tool into a spatial intelligence service provider. In August this year, the company launched the world's first AI-native map application, Amap 2025, with features such as AI navigation and AI exploration, all powered by BDS.

Fueled by the vast spatio-temporal data accumulated by BDS, Amap's AI navigation assistant Xiao Gao can carry out complex spatio-temporal reasoning and planning. Within a month of its launch, Xiao Gao's daily calling volume exceeded 1.2 billion, and its monthly active users surpassed 400 million, making it an AI travel assistant serving one billion users.

An increasing number of innovative applications, scenarios and previously unimaginable possibilities are emerging from the integration of BDS and AI.

"In the era of AI and the Internet of Everything, the spatio-temporal data processing and knowledge mining must move toward intelligence. The 'BDS+' and '+BDS' are key paths toward this goal," said Li Deren, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a renowned remote sensing expert from Wuhan University. ■