When I took a taxi this morning, the master suddenly pointed out to me: "Look at that car, it must be self-driving." More than a look, sure enough. It can be said that the existing automatic driving system of mass production vehicles is still "inhuman", that is to say, it can be seen at a glance that machines are driving, not people.
In recent years, discussions about autonomous driving have emerged one after another. At present, most production cars are equipped with L2, and automatic driving systems advertised as L2+, L2.5, etc. But in fact, we can now experience a higher level of autonomous driving technology. For example, Waymo, owned by Google's parent company Alphabet, has been able to implement Robotaxi operation without a security officer.
In February this year, the National Development and Reform Commission and other 1 1 ministries and commissions jointly issued the "Innovative Development Strategy for Smart Cars", which took "vehicle-road coordination" as an important goal for future development and pushed the word to the forefront.
In fact, with the support of 5G and new infrastructure, China is most likely to achieve vehicle-road coordination.
The Internet, automation and intelligence of automobiles have been the established direction of automobile development. Autopilot automobiles are considered to have the function of artificial intelligence (AI), which can drive automatically, perceive their surroundings, identify nearby objects and perform reasoning and decision-making.
Vehicle-road coordination means that vehicles need to use the Internet of Things service through the 5G-V2X network, and can interact with other vehicles on the road, even pedestrians and non-motor vehicles.
Simply put, vehicle-road coordination needs not only "smart cars" but also "smart roads".
intelligent automobile
"In terms of driverless driving based on bicycle intelligence, we are two years behind American technology."
Chen Yinzi, vice president of Shanghai Zhongzhixing Technology, believes that it is difficult to surpass the technology accumulated by others through a large number of tests in a short time, but we can still adopt the most suitable way to overtake in corners in China. In fact, vehicle-road coordination can greatly reduce the computing power demand of the car itself, but bicycles still need to have certain perception ability.
Unmanned driving technology mainly uses laser radar, millimeter wave radar, high-definition camera and sensor to capture the scene information around the vehicle, and outputs instructions to the computer through AI artificial intelligence algorithm to control the steering, braking and speed of the vehicle, so as to make the vehicle drive safely.
While most manufacturers are still investing in the research of bicycle intelligence, China Star had a mature L4-class automatic driving last year and turned to the direction of vehicle-road coordination.
In the current automobile industry, many people hope that autonomous driving can improve traffic congestion and reduce traffic accidents. In fact, the detection range of sensors carried by bicycles is limited, and vehicles and pedestrians blocked by obstacles at close range cannot be identified. The realization of bicycle intelligence is more about liberating drivers. In the case of bad weather and unexpected accidents, the overall coordination between vehicles and roads has become more important.
Sensor erected on both side of that road can make vehicles predict the road conditions several kilometers ahead and the vehicle and pedestrians surrounded by obstacles in advance, so as to obtain higher safety. Especially in bad weather such as rain, snow and fog, roadside sensors can also fill the limitations of bicycle sensors in detection ability and further improve safety.
At the same time, in Intelligent Vehicle Infrastructure Cooperative Systems, vehicles and roadside equipment can also interact with the "cloud brain" of the urban traffic system in real time, and the urban cloud uniformly dispatches traffic flow, greatly improving traffic efficiency. For example, when encountering traffic lights, waiting vehicles can start at the same time, alleviating or even eliminating tidal phenomena. Moreover, urban clouds can also plan lanes more reasonably and greatly reduce congestion.
For an extreme example, an unmanned smart car is walking on the road. Just as it passed under a bridge, a street lamp fell off the bridge. If it is a bicycle smart, it can recognize and bypass the street lamp after it falls, but if it happens to hit your car, no matter how smart the car is; If it is vehicle-road coordination, the roadside induction unit will notify the surrounding vehicles when the street lamp falls, and your vehicle and the car behind it will automatically stop under the bridge and the street lamp will land, so you only need to make a safe detour.
The road of wisdom
In order to realize environment-aware vehicle-road coordination, it is very important to develop roadside equipment: at present, Continental Group's products in the field of intelligent transportation include a complete set of solutions for sensing system, processing system and network connection to support the three elements of intelligent transportation: perception, decision-making and interconnection.
Perceptual link: Continental Group's high-performance all-weather 77Hz millimeter-wave radar sensor, combined with the AI intelligent image fusion algorithm traffic camera with independent intellectual property rights, is like installing eyes on the road, and the image and radar sensor complement each other. Using Doppler effect, roadside information can be obtained all-weather, uninterrupted, efficient and accurate.
Decision-making process: A powerful brain "edge computing unit MEC" is needed to provide computing power, so as to establish an environmental model for multiple sensors to obtain data and complete the seamless docking of data between sensors, and finally output the results supporting decision-making, which provides a solid guarantee for the intercommunication of signals and data between sensors.
Networking interworking link: After obtaining the roadside information, our roadside communication unit will interact with the vehicle-mounted communication unit at the vehicle end through the 4G/5G wireless network, so as to realize the complete integration and docking of the vehicle-side signal and the roadside signal through the background system service architecture, which has the characteristics of low delay and high coverage.
Continental's environmental sensing hardware system can monitor road conditions around the clock. At the same time, the processing system will fuse various environmental information and signals collected by the sensor system and transform them into key operating factors such as traffic flow information, traffic information and road conditions. The network connection system connects the car with the road, transmits the road and traffic information from the road end to the car, and transmits the vehicle information from the car end to the road.
Gu Wei, head of Continental Commercial Vehicle and Service Division in China, revealed: "Continental has deployed environmental awareness solutions in the main application scenarios of China traffic, and some key pilot cities hope to cooperate or negotiate. After that, it will further increase the research and development of new products and projects in the field of intelligent transportation, and provide assistance for the construction of intelligent transportation in China. "
In the initial realization of vehicle-road coordination, the mainland has established a localized ecosystem of commercial vehicles and automobiles, with safety, cost and efficiency as the core concerns.
The maintenance module helps drivers develop fuel-saving driving habits and provides the most timely, accurate and economical maintenance scheme for the team. The intelligent dispatching and automatic driving module provides the most reasonable transportation route, the most efficient dispatching scheme and the most intelligent management scheme for the fleet; In all-weather vehicle inspection, the driving instructor and online engineer module can improve the vehicle inspection process, supervise and standardize the driver's driving behavior habits, detect vehicle faults online, and propose solutions to improve the safety of the fleet during operation.
cooperative vehicle-infrastructure system (CVIS)
Now, everyone is crossing the river by feeling the stones. Before the real national standard is unified, the state of letting a hundred flowers blossom can greatly promote this development.
We should seize the global leading opportunity of China's 5G technology, combine the bicycle intelligence supported by AI with 5G, and add an all-weather, full-scene, 360-degree "clairvoyance" and "intelligent brain" to the single-point smart car. Realize the interconnection and mutual control of everything between cars, roads, people and infrastructure.
In the future, every vehicle will be the receiver, relay, processor and sender of information, and will be deployed and run on an urban intelligent network as a whole.
According to the introduction of China Star, on July 1 1 day, 2020, the Technology Innovation Center of China Telecom Co., Ltd., Shanghai Economic and Information Technology Commission and China Star (Shanghai) Transportation Technology Co., Ltd. formally signed a tripartite cooperation agreement on "Key Technology Research and Industrial Application of Intelligent Vehicle-Road Collaboration".
In order to promote the large-scale implementation of V2X, Continental Group is also actively communicating with industry standard makers and relevant national ministries and commissions to promote the introduction of relevant laws, regulations and standards.
With the active promotion of the country, perhaps the beautiful scene mentioned above will happen soon, and the future is worth looking forward to.
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.