In 2020, "new infrastructure" has become the focus of national attention. According to statistics, as of March 1, 13 provinces and cities across the country have released a list of investment plans for key projects in 2020, involving a total investment amount of approximately 34 trillion in new infrastructure. The seven major sectors include 5G infrastructure, charging piles, big data centers, artificial intelligence, industrial Internet, etc., covering all aspects of transportation, industrial production, people's livelihood security, communications and other aspects.
Seven major areas of new infrastructure
Autonomous driving enters the fast lane
Compared with the traditional "railway, public infrastructure", "new infrastructure" has a strong industrial focus The Internet gene emphasizes the use of many existing cutting-edge technologies to transform and upgrade traditional industries, which is an "incorporated" development process. From this perspective, the technological accumulation of many Chinese technology companies over the years has laid the foundation for the development of “new infrastructure”.
Take artificial intelligence, one of the seven major sectors of "new infrastructure", as an example. Autonomous driving integrates almost all types of artificial intelligence technologies and can be said to be the crown of AI technology. Its development and applications involve many aspects from underlying hardware to AI technology and platforms, including chips, sensors, computer vision, cloud platforms, big data services and other technology sectors, covering environmental perception, decision-making, high-precision maps and positioning, and Internet of Vehicles. Complex segmented industry chains such as V2X, decision control, testing and verification, etc.
Tencent’s self-driving car road test
Every industrial revolution is driven by the three major fields of energy, transportation, and information. With the country's strong support for the development of the new energy industry, the popularization of large-bandwidth, low-latency 5G communication networks, and smart road construction, autonomous driving will enter the fast lane of development.
Technology companies have increased investment in technology in the field of autonomous driving
In the past few years, many technology companies represented by Tencent have invested a lot of resources in order to realize the commercialization of autonomous driving. Sufficient technical capital has been reserved for autonomous driving to embrace the "new infrastructure" era.
1. High-precision maps cover highways and expressways across the country
Taking high-precision maps as an example, it can provide vehicles with accurate vehicle location information and rich road element data information. Help cars predict complex road information, such as slope, curvature, heading, etc. High-precision maps are a necessary condition for self-driving cars at level 4 or above.
There are only a handful of companies in my country that have high-precision map production qualifications, and Tencent is one of them. At present, Tencent's high-precision map team has completed the collection and data production of high-precision maps for expressways and highways in key cities across the country, and L4 autonomous vehicles based on high-precision maps have also begun road testing.
2. Implementation and application of autonomous driving simulation technology
Testing and verification are a major difficulty in the implementation of autonomous driving technology. Absolute safety is human expectations and requirements for autonomous vehicles, and the industry generally believes that to achieve this, at least 11 billion miles of test data are needed to optimize the autonomous driving system. This requires 100 cars to run at a speed of 40km/h day and night for more than 500 years. It is an unattainable goal for any company.
In order to accumulate sufficient test data, using simulation platforms to improve test efficiency has become a common choice in the industry. Tencent also uses powerful game engines, industrial-grade vehicle dynamics models, three-dimensional reconstruction and other technologies to create the autonomous driving simulation system TAD?Sim.
Comparison of simulation effects on Boyuan Road in Shanghai
Through high-precision and scalable simulation technology, Tencent’s autonomous driving simulation platform can build a world that is infinitely close to the real world according to specific needs. The scenario can not only meet the continuous iterative testing needs, but also improve the efficiency of autonomous driving research and development. In addition to scenario-based cloud simulation, Tencent has also created a virtual city-based cloud simulation that allows autonomous vehicles to continuously operate in a virtual environment, supports large-scale parallel acceleration, improves test efficiency, and meets the verification needs of the development of autonomous driving technology.
Currently, autonomous driving testing and verification institutions such as the National Intelligent Connected Vehicle "Changsha" Test Center are also using Tencent's simulation platform to explore innovative applications for testing and verification.
3. Adapt to the times? Lay out 5G-V2X
V2X is another key technology for the implementation of autonomous driving, where V represents the vehicle and X represents any information that interacts with the vehicle. Objects, currently X mainly includes vehicles, people, traffic roadside infrastructure and networks. The function of this technology is to open the closed loop between vehicles, roads and people, and realize real-time information interaction between vehicles and the outside world, so as to make up for the lack of single-vehicle intelligence to the maximum extent and ensure that autonomous vehicles can drive safely in extremely complex traffic environments.
V2X technology relies on the large bandwidth and low-latency information exchange brought by 5G. In the "new infrastructure", 5G construction is also listed as a top priority as the key to supporting the digital, networked, and intelligent transformation of the economy and society.
In terms of the application of 5G-V2X, Tencent Future Network Laboratory officially released the 5G vehicle-road collaboration open source platform in May 2019, focusing on the field of vehicle-road collaboration based on edge computing and focusing on solving Industry pain points such as the low penetration rate of terminal equipment, the lack of mainstream software reaching users, the lack of effective connections to road equipment, and the fragmentation of road information have promoted the rapid implementation of intelligent connected vehicle applications.
Conclusion:
On the one hand, the new infrastructure boom has brought more development opportunities to technology companies. On the other hand, the innovative exploration of technology companies has also provided opportunities for new infrastructure development. Base. It can be said that technology companies represented by Tencent have accumulated a large amount of cutting-edge technologies. With the promotion and popularization of "new infrastructure", they can help players in the autonomous driving industry achieve rapid development and promote the construction of smart transportation systems.
In the future, with the full rollout of "new infrastructure", the upstream and downstream of the autonomous driving industry chain will usher in greater room for development. Such a virtuous cycle will have a positive impact on smart transportation represented by autonomous driving technology. It is of great significance to the construction of the system and even the overall development of the entire society.
This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.