How long will the "purchase restriction" and "restriction" of vehicles in big cities continue? Can congestion be solved once and for all? How to reduce traffic safety accidents by 90%? How far are we from being driverless? What will the city of the future look like? Under the background of the accelerated evolution of the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial revolution, what key problems need to be solved for intelligent transportation with a new generation of intelligent technology as the core? What are the innovation breakthroughs?
On December 2, the book "Intelligent Transportation: Major Changes Affecting Mankind in the Next 10-40 Years" was published by the People's Publishing House. As the first monograph in China to systematically expound the current situation and prospects of China's intelligent transportation development, "Intelligent Transportation: Major Changes Affecting Mankind in the Next 10-40 Years" was created by Robin Li, founder, chairman and CEO of Baidu, combined with domestic and international dual visions, and comprehensively analyzed and elaborated the "Chinese model" of intelligent transportation construction in a three-dimensional way. For the first time, the book systematically proposes six innovative concepts and models in the field of intelligent transportation in China, namely intelligent transportation operator mode, vehicle-road collaborative automatic driving, adaptive intelligent information control system, technical difficulties and breakthroughs in high-level automatic driving above L4 level, MaaS travel as a service model, map ETA traffic time intelligent estimation and reservation travel.
Intelligent Transportation: Major Changes Affecting Mankind in the Next 10-40 Years, by Robin Li, People's Publishing House, December 2021.
As Robin Li says in the book's preface, there are daily news of traffic accidents and deaths everywhere, according to data released by the Association for Safe Inter-national Road Travel (ASIRT), about 1.35 million people die in traffic accidents every year, which means that on average, 1 person is killed in traffic accidents every 24 seconds worldwide; in addition, 20 million people are killed in traffic accidents every year. 50 million people were injured in traffic accidents. Among them, India has the largest number of deaths, with more than 150,000 road traffic fatalities in 2019. So, how to reduce traffic safety accidents by 90%? To this end, Li Yanhong started from paying attention to the solution of safety problems through automatic driving, deepening little by little, and also enlarging the scale of attention little by little - paying attention to the problem of dangerous driving by human drivers and the problems of automatic driving, intelligent transportation, and smart cities.
Stills from the movie Need for Speed (2014).
Intelligent Transportation: Major Changes Affecting Humanity in the Next 10-40 Years is not Robin Li's first series of books, before which he completed and published "Intelligent Revolution" and "Intelligent Economy". Among them, "Intelligent Revolution" is a popular science book, focusing on the past and present lives of artificial intelligence, so that the public can have a clearer and more complete understanding of artificial intelligence. "Smart Economy" focuses on the relationship between artificial intelligence technology and economic development, and explores the value of artificial intelligence as a new infrastructure and new momentum for social development. In Robin Li's view, the original intention and starting point of the book "Intelligent Transportation" are more in-depth than the positioning of the above two books - I hope to explore how to solve the problem of traffic congestion, how to reduce traffic accidents by 90%, how to help the national "3060" double carbon target and what the future city should be.
Li Yanhong said that transportation is a subdivision field for artificial intelligence, but for a country and a nation, it is not only an economic problem, but also a social problem, a people's livelihood problem, a problem that is closely related to everyone every day, a problem that cannot be truly solved by market forces alone, a system project that requires the government, enterprises, and the public to fully gather consensus, and is an important area related to the national economy and people's livelihood. Zhang Yaqin, a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, commented that deep learning and intelligent robots are reconstructing the cars, transportation and cities of the future. In Robin Li's view, the inflection point of the era of intelligent transportation has arrived.
Baidu "Radish Run" unmanned car travel service.
How should we view autonomous driving? Robin Li said that as his attention to traffic issues has become deeper, the dimension of looking at autonomous driving has also changed significantly. Baidu's development direction has also gradually extended from autonomous driving to vehicle-road collaboration, intelligent transportation, and digital city operation. This made him more and more certain: an intelligent transportation system can greatly reduce the probability of traffic accidents, "over time, people will become more and more aware that autonomous driving is safer than human driving." With the further maturity of unmanned driving, 'smart cars', 'smart roads', vehicle-road coordination, intelligent traffic management systems, etc., will reduce the probability of traffic accidents, whether it is cyclists, motorcycle riders, or walkers, travel is safer. ”
At the same time, an intelligent transportation system should be able to effectively solve the problem of congestion. Li Yanhong pointed out that according to the analysis, the number of one-way commutes in Beijing exceeds 60 minutes per day has reached about 1.5 million. Beijing, Nanchang, Changchun, Lanzhou, Guiyang, Hangzhou, Chengdu and other cities have successively implemented tail number restrictions; Beijing, Guiyang, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin and Hangzhou have also tried to solve the problem of congestion through the implementation of the "purchase restriction" policy. However, can the solution to the congestion problem only rely on "purchase restriction" and "traffic restriction"?
Robin Li believes that the answer is no. In his view, the congestion problem can be better solved through intelligent transportation, "through calculation, intelligent transportation based on vehicle-road coordination will be able to improve the traffic efficiency by 15%-30%, and within 5 years, China's first-tier cities will no longer need 'purchase restriction' and 'restriction of traffic'; within 10 years, relying on the improvement of traffic efficiency, basically the congestion problem can be solved." ”
Stills from the TV series New Thunderbolt Ranger (2008). In the old version, David Hasselhoff's Ranger drove the ARTIFICIAL-powered sports car KIT to punish evil and promote good, which was remembered by TV fans in the 1980s, and now The Ranger's son Mike Traceur will lead his friends and the new Knight Industrial 3000 sports car back to the screen to continue the fight against evil.
Robin Li also said that intelligent transportation systems can improve traffic efficiency, save energy, reduce the level of air pollution, help carbon peak and carbon neutrality, and benefit everyone with travel needs. At present, traffic problems such as congestion, low parking efficiency, and unreasonable travel structure are exacerbating the carbon emissions of cities, making environmental pollution more serious. By building high-level intelligent roads, vigorously developing vehicle-road coordination and automatic driving, and building a safe, convenient, efficient and low-carbon intelligent travel service system, we can make our cities greener.
Reporter | Ho An Ann
Edit | Shen Chan
Proofreading | Lucy