Beijing will build a high-level autonomous driving demonstration zone within this year
Author:Liu Ming
Time:2020/09/23
Read: 3787
"A set of advanced lidar costs more than 100,000 yuan, which is almost equal to the price of a car. In the future, the cost of self-driving cars is expected to drop significantly through the use of networked cloud-controlled technology. […]
"A set of advanced lidar costs more than 100,000 yuan, which is almost the same as the price of a car. In the future, through network-connected and cloud-controlled technology, the cost of autonomous vehicles is expected to drop significantly." said Yang Diange, a professor at the School of Vehicles and Transportation at Tsinghua University. According to the Zhongguancun Forum, before the end of this year, the world's first network-connected and cloud-controlled high-level autonomous driving demonstration zone will be officially built in the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone.
New technology drives price cuts for self-driving vehicles
Autonomous driving technology is developing rapidly in our country, and its industrial application prospects are extremely broad. However, to this day, many difficulties still restrict the pace of development of the autonomous driving industry.
Kong Lei, member of the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone Working Committee and deputy director of the Management Committee, said that at present, domestic and foreign autonomous driving companies mainly adopt the single-vehicle intelligent technology route, which still cannot achieve large-scale operation of L4 and above autonomous vehicles. At the same time, the production cost of self-driving cars remains high, which is not enough to support the large-scale mass production of self-driving cars.
"Currently, the most advanced self-driving vehicles generally use high-precision lidar. This kind of radar usually costs tens of thousands of yuan, and the more expensive ones cost more than 100,000 yuan, which is almost the same price as an ordinary car." Yang Diange said, "In order to cooperate with Advanced lidar, these self-driving vehicles also require 8 to 10 cameras, and a powerful on-board computer to process the massive amounts of data involved."
Demonstration area promotes large-scale operation of autonomous driving
In order to promote and solve the problem of autonomous driving industrialization, this city decided to build a high-level autonomous driving demonstration area after in-depth research to accelerate the large-scale operation of high-level autonomous driving at L4 and above. On the basis of supporting the continued iterative improvement of bicycle intelligence, this city will focus on building the world's first network-connected and cloud-controlled high-level autonomous driving demonstration area.
Yang Diange explained that to put it simply, in the past, autonomous driving mainly relied on bicycle intelligence systems, which required the autonomous vehicle to "carry all the burden" on its own, install the best lidar and numerous cameras, and have a powerful on-board computer, which makes The price of supporting equipment and systems for autonomous vehicles even significantly exceeds the value of the vehicle itself.
The network-linked cloud-controlled high-level autonomous driving demonstration area to be built in this city will use real-time data flow and exchange between vehicles, roads, and clouds. Cloud computers will be responsible for large amounts of data calculations, reducing the computing pressure on on-board computers. Road cameras and more reliable high-precision real-time maps provide more information on road dynamics.
He said that under the conditions of the network-connected and cloud-controlled high-level autonomous driving demonstration area, autonomous vehicles do not need to be equipped with expensive lidar, but can be equipped with relatively cheap millimeter-wave radar, and the required on-board computer functions can also be equipped with It has been relatively reduced, thereby lowering the cost of self-driving vehicles and promoting the popularization of self-driving technology.
A city-level test platform will be formed in 2022
The Beijing High-Level Autonomous Driving Demonstration Zone is being constructed with the entire Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone as the core. By 2022, the construction of five major systems of "smart roads, smart cars, real-time cloud, reliable network and accurate maps" will be completed. Open up the key links of technology and management of network-connected cloud-controlled autonomous driving, realize the commercialization of a series of application scenarios and promote the application of a number of intermediate products.
The construction of the demonstration area will adopt the method of "small steps, fast progress, iterative improvement", with an iteration cycle of 3 to 6 months, constantly revising and improving the subsequent construction methods and content, and gradually identifying the optimal configuration relationship between vehicles, roads and clouds. According to the steps of test environment construction, small-scale deployment, large-scale deployment and scenario expansion, promotion and scenario optimization, it will be gradually replicated and promoted to other areas in Beijing after forming a mature model.
At present, the city has launched the first phase of construction and deployed 10 kilometers of urban roads, 10 kilometers of highways and 1 intelligent parking lot. In the future, the city will complete the preliminary verification of key network-connected cloud control technologies through small-scale, multi-scenario, differentiated deployment of roadside intelligent facilities and related communication networks, and provide a test platform for enterprise product testing and iteration.
Liu Ming 