Recent Surge in Public Interest in Transportation: Sentiment Analysis of
  Baidu Apollo Go Using Weibo Data
Authors: name: Shiqi Wang, name: Zhouye Zhao, name: Yuhang Xie, name: Mingchuan Ma, name: Zirui Chen, name: Zeyu Wang, name: Bohao Su, name: Wenrui Xu, name: Tianyi Li

Urban mobility and transportation systems have been profoundly transformed by
the advancement of autonomous vehicle technologies. Baidu Apollo Go, a pioneer
robotaxi service from the Chinese tech giant Baidu, has recently been widely
deployed in major cities like Beijing and Wuhan, sparking increased
conversation and offering a glimpse into the future of urban mobility.
  This study investigates public attitudes towards Apollo Go across China using
Sentiment Analysis with a hybrid BERT model on 36,096 Weibo posts from January
to July 2024. The analysis shows that 89.56\% of posts related to Apollo Go are
clustered in July. From January to July, public sentiment was mostly positive,
but negative comments began to rise after it became a hot topic on July 21.
  Spatial analysis indicates a strong correlation between provinces with high
discussion intensity and those where Apollo Go operates. Initially, Hubei and
Guangdong dominated online posting volume, but by July, Guangdong, Beijing, and
international regions had overtaken Hubei. Attitudes varied significantly among
provinces, with Xinjiang and Qinghai showing optimism and Tibet and Gansu
expressing concerns about the impact on traditional taxi services.
  Sentiment analysis revealed that positive comments focused on technology
applications and personal experiences, while negative comments centered on job
displacement and safety concerns. In summary, this study highlights the
divergence in public perceptions of autonomous ride-hailing services, providing
valuable insights for planners, policymakers, and service providers. The model
is published on Hugging Face at
https://huggingface.co/wsqstar/bert-finetuned-weibo-luobokuaipao and the
repository on GitHub at https://github.com/GIStudio/trb2024.