China's Internet giant Baidu inaugurated a national deep learning technology lab in Beijing on March 2 to boost research in the field.

The national engineering lab of deep learning technology and application will be led by Baidu and built in cooperation with partner researchers and institutes, said Baidu in a press release.

The goal of the lab is to integrate resources from government, industry leaders and academic communities to improve the country's overall research capability and applications in the area of deep learning and artificial intelligence, it said.

The lab will strengthen innovation capability to take the lead in the development of the sector, said Sun Wei, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission.

The lab will focus research on areas such as visual perception, speech recognition, biometrics recognition and human-machine interaction.

(Xinhua News Agency March 2, 2017)