Smart cars, smart roads - vehicle-road coordination

In essence, the target of security is people, and traffic is cars and roads. Although smart transportation has been built for many years, the natural connection between cars and roads is far from enough. Until the emergence of vehicle-road coordination.

Vehicle-road coordination has been the most inescapable buzzword in intelligent transportation in recent years. So, what is vehicle-road coordination? Roughly speaking, it is one of the core technologies of the next-generation Internet of Vehicles. Through vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-road (V2I), vehicle-to-person (V2P), vehicle-to-cloud (V2N) and other information interaction and sharing, it enables Vehicles and the surrounding environment cooperate and cooperate to realize the integrated network of intelligent traffic management control, vehicle intelligent control and intelligent dynamic information service.

On September 14, 2018, Alibaba announced that it will launch strategic cooperation with Intel and Datang Telecom Group in the field of vehicle-road collaboration in intelligent transportation. According to the agreement, Alibaba will jointly explore 5G communication technology for the application of the Intel processor-based edge computing platform on V2X, and Datang Telecom Group will provide Alibaba with LTE-V2X communication technology. Since then, the comprehensive layout of vehicle-road coordination has begun.

In March 2019, Miao Wei, Minister of Industry and Information Technology, said that the 5G application 80% will be used for communication between things, and the application of 5G technology represented by driverless cars may be the earliest application.

In February 2020, despite the cold wind of the epidemic, 11 national ministries and commissions including the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the "Notice on Printing and Distributing the "Innovative Development Strategy for Smart Cars"", which proposed that by 2025, China's standard smart cars The technological innovation, industrial ecology, infrastructure, regulations and standards, product supervision and network security systems are basically formed. The main tasks proposed in the "Strategy" include: promoting the planning and construction of intelligent road infrastructure, building a wide-coverage wireless communication network for vehicles, building a high-precision space-time reference service capability for vehicles covering the whole country, and building a road traffic geography covering the national road network. Information system, building a national smart car big data cloud control basic platform, improving network security protection capabilities, etc.

It is most appropriate to describe the history of vehicle-road coordination in my country as driving high and walking high. In this way, the harmony and unity of vehicles and roads is what the public expects and is caused by market demand.

When any new technology emerges, there will be hurdles that need to be overcome. We call it technological improvement and upgrading. Only in this way can we continue to keep pace with market demand in the running-in of scene applications. There are mainly the following points:

First, there is a contradiction between the cautious formulation of legal systems and policy standards and the rapid technological innovation.That is to say, the pace of construction is too big, and the technology is unconstrained, but how to have the most reasonable and effective constraints on laws and policies, and form the behavioral rules, traceability system and credit reporting system that the public abides by is a complicated and necessary government issue. .

Second, ethical and moral issues restrict commercialization and large-scale popularization.In the past, expressway operating companies mainly built and maintained road facilities, and travelers paid to enjoy traffic services. New services will be provided in the vehicle-road coordination phase, and there will also be some new participating units. For example, communication operators can give away mobile phones and after-installed vehicle equipment, and obtain benefits through the Internet of Things to collect traffic fees; vehicle terminal companies can provide travel services through human-computer interaction, and can also use service areas, scenic spots, and insurance companies to For product recommendation and scenic spot recommendation, charge relevant fees to third-party information service providers, and at the same time obtain big data information on user travel, so as to provide big data decision-making for product marketing and customization; the last is emergency rescue services. The business model of vehicle-road coordination in the future still needs to be continuously explored, because the toll standards of expressways are difficult to adjust, and how to achieve sustainable development of vehicle-road coordination is a question that should be considered.

Third, public information security and citizens' personal privacy are also threatened.Vehicle-road coordination technology originated from abroad. The A58 highway in the Netherlands has implemented vehicle formation driving and vehicle-road coordination. Based on mobile phone-based vehicle-road coordination, it can display the speed limit information on the road, and also supports automatic driving. It involves ethics and privacy issues. In the actual project application, there are still many difficult problems. How we break the situation at home, we have to be cautious.

Fourth, public security traffic management and law enforcement services are facing new opportunities.There are many changes in this area. Let me give you an example, such as the transformation of vehicle-road coordination from traffic management to governance concepts. The original public security traffic management information is relatively closed, and the information is used for its own traffic management applications. After use, it loses its application value along with the end of the management tasks. Information under vehicle-road coordination can be used for some travel services for traffic travelers, such as traffic guidance, control, and events. These traffic management information can be transformed into service information for traffic travelers. In addition, with the development of autonomous driving, Internet of Vehicles, and Internet-connected automobile technologies, the perception and intelligence of vehicle-mounted terminals are getting higher and higher. These methods have also greatly enriched the collection of traffic management information and can improve the accuracy of urban traffic conditions. In order to improve the decision-making of smart traffic, improve the efficiency of traffic management, and promote the transformation of traffic.

Fifth, reorient the driver's skills.After the stage of automatic driving, whether the driver's license test requirements should be adjusted appropriately, such as a new understanding of automatic driving and drunk driving.

Sixth, at the technical level, the device-edge-cloud architecture is more appropriate at present.Vehicle-road coordination mainly involves three ports: vehicle end, roadside end and cloud. Among them, roadside end and cloud are often mentioned at the same time because of the demand for computing nodes to sink to the edge layer (that is, roadside) in the vehicle-road coordination environment. . Considering the importance of information transmission channels between the three ports, a more complete disassembly method for the vehicle-road collaborative system platform is the following three core components: intelligent vehicle system (vehicle terminal), intelligent roadside system (roadside terminal) + cloud) and communication platforms.

Among them, the intelligent on-board system is responsible for the real-time processing of massive data on the on-board side and the fusion of multi-sensor data to ensure the stability and safety of the vehicle in various complex situations; the intelligent roadside system is responsible for the collection of road condition information and edge-side calculations to complete the digitalization of road conditions Sensing and deployment of nearby cloud computing power; the communication platform is responsible for providing real-time information pipelines for vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-road transmission, through a low-latency, high-reliability, and fast-access network environment, and in real traffic scenarios, due to participants Due to the large number of pedestrians and the strong randomness of road conditions, the on-board operating system must be able to complete the entire process from command reception, task calculation processing to decision-making execution within 100 milliseconds. Otherwise, if data collection and analysis to processing are not timely, then Vehicle-road coordination is meaningless and dangerous everywhere.

Of course, the problems faced by vehicle-road coordination at the technical level are more than sporadic, and we will not introduce them one by one. After all, this new technology is still in the stage of crossing the river by feeling the stones. Things that look beautiful are difficult in actual construction, just like smartphones. System development is extremely complex, but it is simple and efficient when presented to users. This is also the technical path that vehicle-road collaboration needs to pursue.

Making cars smart is a must for vehicle-road coordination, and it is also an unprecedented road of exploration.

In December 2018, Huawei and Audi took the lead in testing the L2~L4 level-related automatic driving functions based on C-V2X technology on the Yanchong Expressway at a speed of 80 kilometers per hour. It was also the same year that driverless cars might soon become commonplace on the roads, as car companies like Volvo, Tesla, and BMW began investing in self-driving cars. However, the popularization of unmanned driving must first ensure that vehicles can communicate with each other and the safety of drivers, so vehicle-road coordination is the prelude to unmanned driving, and the prelude is essential.

Compared with foreign countries, my country's traditional car manufacturing industry is indeed lagging behind, but the smart car products brought by new energy, China is not far behind, and how to make cars smarter, form vehicle-road coordination, the cost of smart enterprise smart evolution and smart The efficiency is much higher than that of traditional cars. Therefore, in recent years, automakers of independent brands have completed the coordinated layout of vehicles and roads in the process of self-evolution. However, we need to see that our so-called smart cars are basically passenger vehicles, and how to realize the self-evolution of the vehicle itself is still a relatively vague road of exploration for operating vehicles, especially special vehicles.

As far as the intelligent transportation industry is concerned, the Automobile Road Association pays more attention to the construction of roads. If it has to be, for example, in vehicle-road coordination, the car is the carrier, but the road is the soul.

As early as 2016, Baidu began to deploy the full-stack research and development of vehicle-road collaboration. It can be said that it is one of the earliest companies in the industry to deploy vehicle-road collaboration. Collaborative technology and services in the field will allow autonomous driving to enter a new stage where "smart cars" and "smart roads" cooperate with each other, comprehensively build an intelligent transportation system with global data perception of "people-vehicle-road", and take a step forward in the construction of intelligent transportation This is the industry's first open source vehicle-road coordination solution.

In recent years, due to the brand effect brought about by the breakthrough of smartphones, Huawei has become the protagonist in the center of the stage in many fields. Huawei has trade-offs, and what they do and what they don't do, that's what they have to do in their ecology. Therefore, Huawei will definitely not build cars.

At this year's "New Infrastructure Helps the Construction of a Powerful Transportation Country - Greater Bay Area Smart Transportation Technology Application Seminar", the reporter learned from an interview with Huawei that they believe that the construction of a domestic demonstration zone for intelligent network connection pilots should not only represent the industry's advanced It also needs to have the openness of the system and play the role of benchmarking.

Specifically, in terms of standardization and demonstration of the system, the overall construction of the intelligent network connection must first meet the corresponding national standards and certification requirements to ensure the standardization of system construction; at the same time, the advanced practical experience of the demonstration area can participate in the national intelligent network connection In the process of standard formulation, it plays a leading role in the industry.

The openness of the system can reflect the openness of the ecology. For example, car companies are the largest users of intelligent network connections. The establishment of intelligent network connections needs to allow upstream and downstream ecology, especially mainstream car companies, to participate in the joint construction of prosperity. The cloud control platform built Compatible with domestic mainstream car companies, the system can evolve smoothly and avoid redundant construction. The overall design and product solutions must support the smooth transition of key technologies such as 3GPP communication standard protocols (4G-5G-6G—), ensuring the backward compatibility of the latest technologies , to minimize the cost increase brought about by technological evolution; system security must be considered, as a new infrastructure project, it must comply with the national key core technology and system independent and controllable orientation and requirements. The advanced nature of the products used has the core technology, and the key components can be independently controlled and maintain industry leadership. Therefore, Huawei will make full use of cloud, IOT, AI, 5G and other digital technologies to achieve efficient human-vehicle-road-cloud collaboration, create smart cars and smart roads, and provide users with smart travel services and experiences. .

As mentioned earlier, unmanned driving is a form of driving. To explore the impact of vehicle-road coordination on unmanned driving, we can also look at it from two levels.

Impact on Driver Behavior

The impact of the vehicle-road collaborative environment on drivers is multifaceted, and the driving behavior process can be generally divided into three stages: perception, judgment, and operation. Among them, the impact of the vehicle-road collaborative environment on driving behavior is mainly reflected in the first two stages. The perception stage is the basis of the subsequent stages. Quickly obtaining accurate information is the basis for ensuring the subsequent correct judgment and accurate operation. The main factors affecting the driver's perception speed and accuracy are attention allocation and information load. When the vehicle-road coordination system is used, the driver's mental state, such as blink frequency and heartbeat frequency, etc., indicate that the driver's perception of tension will be lower than when the vehicle-road coordination system is not used. Compared with young people, the vehicle-road coordination system has a greater effect on the elderly. It can improve the driver's perception level and shorten the driver's perception time.

Influence on driving safety and reliability 

The traditional driving behavior mainly consists of the driver-centered perception, judgment and operation process to form a closed-loop control system. The safe application of vehicle-road coordination technology has changed the driving process of cars. The safety application of vehicle-road coordination technology can be divided into two categories: one is a safety assistance system for the purpose of early warning, and the other is a safety assistance system for the purpose of automatic control.

From the perspective of system reliability, the safety assistance system for the purpose of early warning can be considered as an automatic perception system connected in parallel with the driver's perception in the perception stage. The incorporation of the system can improve the driver's perception level and shorten the driver's perception time. On the other hand, vehicle-to-vehicle/vehicle-road coordination also performs risk judgment and early warning on the basis of perception. Although the judgment and early warning results of the system still require the driver to make a decision on this basis, it will also effectively shorten the driver's judgment and decision-making time.

For a parallel system, the reliability of the system is higher than that of its individual subsystems. Therefore, in a certain sense, the introduction of the vehicle-road collaborative safety application system for the purpose of early warning can improve the reliability of the perception process. Different from the safety assistance system for the purpose of early warning, the safety assistance control system with automatic control function not only gives the driver early warning information after judging the safety state of the vehicle, but also automatically controls the vehicle when necessary. Mechanisms (such as brake control mechanism, acceleration control mechanism) issue automatic control commands.

From the perspective of system reliability, the system not only connects the automatic perception subsystem in parallel in the perception link on the basis of the driver control system, but also connects the automatic control subsystem in parallel in the operation stage. As discussed above, when the reliability of each subsystem remains unchanged, the reliability of the entire system will be improved. Therefore, the introduction of vehicle-road coordination technology should be able to improve the safety and reliability of the driving process.

It is true that vehicle-road coordination is the most relevant revolutionary technology for unmanned driving at present, but while emphasizing its impact on improving driving safety performance, we must pay attention to the impact of the application of this technology on drivers. Although it is unmanned driving, technology Still put people first.