Car stuff (public number: chedongxi)
Author | Juice
Edited by | Xiaohan
At the beginning of 2022, there will be a major event in the autonomous driving industry.
Today, MAXIEYE, a domestic autonomous driving company intelligent driving technology, said that the new generation of L2+ intelligent driving system product MAXIMIPILOT has successfully deployed the NOM (Navigate on MAXIPILOT) pilot assistance function, becoming one of the few suppliers in China that can provide pilot assistance function.
Different from the products of other enterprises, this set of smart driving technology MAXIEYE products has a total of three versions, namely the basic version, the high-end version, and the enhanced version, which can match different computing power platforms and sensor configuration schemes, that is to say, the cost and function of this set of smart driving technology MAXIEYE are more optional, and car companies can choose on demand.
At the same time as the release of the news, smart driving technology MAXIEYE also showed a 35-kilometer test drive video covering typical scenes, CEO Zhou Shengyan and CTO Guo Enqing personally got on the car to experience, the whole process of the vehicle is very comfortable to complete the up and down ramp, lane change overtaking and other actions, has stepped into the ranks of front-line auxiliary driving.
▲Smart Driving Technology MAXIEYE NOM automatically into the ramp demonstration
With the continuous efforts of car companies and suppliers, more and more pilot driver assistance systems have appeared in the industry, and the entire automatic driving industry is also constantly booming. And the progressive autonomous driving path from L1 to L5, such as the intelligent driving technology MAXIEYE, has also begun to be widely recognized.
So how is the pilot auxiliary driving function of smart driving technology MAXIEYE? How did the company overcome the technical difficulties?
▲Smart Driving Technology MAXIEYE NOM demonstration video
First, the rapid development of the automatic driving industry Pilot assisted driving a large number of cars
With the rise of the four modernizations of automobiles, the autonomous driving industry has also begun to receive public attention. At present, the automatic driving industry presents two paths, one is to directly force L4 level automatic driving, do driverless taxis, the main representative companies such as Waymo, etc.; the other road is from L0 to L5 in a gradual way to achieve automatic driving on mass production vehicles, representing enterprises such as Tesla.
Due to the consideration of the market and commercialization progress, the second path has become the direction of the joint efforts of many car companies and suppliers.
As early as 2019, Tesla officially pushed the Pilot Assisted Driving NOA to the models with FSD selected in the Chinese market, and after updating this system, the vehicle can complete functions such as automatic entry and exit ramp, automatic lane change and overtaking.
The launch of Tesla's system has also made domestic users feel the charm of science and technology. Subsequently, domestic car companies have also accelerated the research and development progress of pilot auxiliary driving.
At the 2020 Beijing Auto Show, NIO took the lead in announcing that it would launch the pilot auxiliary function NOP, and began to push FOTA upgrades to NIO owners in mid-October. On January 26, 2021, Xiaopeng Motors announced that it will open the NGP (Public Beta) function to users for the first time through OTA upgrades. Also in the second half of 2021, Ideal Auto also pushed the pilot assistance function NOA through OTA.
▲Xiaopeng NGP
It can be said that the gradual introduction of pilot assisted driving has further increased the use scenarios of L2/L2+ level intelligent driving, and laid a good foundation for the further promotion of automatic driving.
But it should also be noted that Tesla and Wei Xiaoli are car companies that have begun to study autonomous driving relatively early, so it is not surprising that they have come to the forefront of the industry. For some car companies, it is more difficult to achieve pilot assisted driving through full-stack self-research, and at the same time, some suppliers have also accelerated the research and development of pilot assisted driving.
Smart Drive Technology MAXIEYE is also one of them. Thanks to the advantages of previous technologies such as perception and regulation, although the intelligent driving technology MAXIEYE only began to lay out the pilot assistant driving NOM at the end of 2020, it officially launched the first version a year later, and the progress was very rapid.
It is worth mentioning that in August this year, the NOM system of smart driving technology MAXIEYE will land on the latest model of a new domestic car company.
Second, there are still pain points in pilot assisted driving There have been accidents before
Although many models have already possessed pilot assisted driving, fundamentally speaking, this system still belongs to L2 level assisted driving, and the vehicle will still face great challenges in some scenarios, and even accidents caused by pilot assisted driving have occurred before.
That is to say, there are still some pain points that need to be solved in the current pilot assisted driving.
First of all, in order to achieve pilot assisted driving, a large number of sensors are needed as aids, which has also led to an increase in the cost of vehicles, and the current price of models with pilot assisted driving on the market is more than 200,000 yuan.
Secondly, the current realization of pilot assisted driving requires the assistance of high-precision maps, and the collection cost of high-precision maps is very high, and the update cycle is not fast.
This leads to the lack of high-precision map coverage in some sections of the road due to road construction and other factors, which is very dangerous in the actual driving process, if the user fails to take over the vehicle in time, it will lead to missing the high-speed exit, and the heavy will also lead to accidents.
Finally, judging from the accidents that have occurred before, the success rate of identification at this stage of pilot assisted driving in the face of some special road conditions such as accident cars in front of them is not high; and cut in is a problem faced by the entire industry.
In addition, there are certain challenges in the overtaking logic of the vehicle, the response to the curved road conditions and the driver's long-term non-takeover.
In order to improve the comfort and safety of pilot assistance driving, various car companies and suppliers are currently making efforts to address these problems. Smart driving technology MAXIEYE has also done a lot of in-depth research on these problems, and has basically solved these pain points.
Third, the first display of test drive video Cost reduction can be flexible on the car
Just today, the intelligent driving technology MAXIEYE officially released a pilot assisted driving NOM experience video, the entire video length of about 6 minutes, the whole journey of 35 kilometers.
The video shows that Zhou Shengyan, CEO of Smart Driving Technology MAXIEYE, and Guo Enqing, CTO, personally experienced the system, and the model equipped with NOM smoothly carried out the operation of the up and down ramps, and the lane change and overtaking of the front car on the highway were also completed very smoothly.
▲Smart driving technology MAXIEYE NOM intelligent beyond the front car demonstration
Judging from the video, the NOM system has matured very well, and the company has become one of the few suppliers that can independently develop pilot assisted driving.
So, how does THE INTELLIGENT DRIVING TECHNOLOGY MAXIEYE DEAL WITH THE PAIN POINTS OF PILOT ASSISTED DRIVING?
It is understood that there are three versions of this program of smart driving technology MAXIEYE, namely the basic version, the high-end version, the enhanced version, the corresponding is the sensor, chip and other hardware solutions, the basic version uses the 5R1V sensor scheme; the high-end version uses the 5R5V sensor scheme; and the enhanced version adopts the 5R11VnL sensor scheme.
The basic version is designed to achieve automatic lane change, and the system will have DMS to ensure that the driver is in the loop.
▲Smart Driving Technology MAXIEYE NOM Basic Edition Sensor Scheme
The high-end version covers the low-speed scene conditions, when the vehicle is blocked by the car in front, the vehicle can detect the lane line through the cameras on both sides, which can solve more kernel cases, on the whole, the user experience of the high-end version will be better, and the robustness of the system will be stronger.
▲Smart Driving Technology MAXIEYE NOM high-end version sensor solution
The enhanced version has added lidar to identify more information. Even if there are no lane lines on the road, vehicles can calculate the driving path by reflecting information such as fences by lidar.
▲Smart Driving Technology MAXIEYE NOM Enhanced Sensor Program
In terms of chips, the algorithm and underlying hardware of MAXIEYE are decoupled, so there are only requirements for computing power, and the basic version only needs about 10TOPS hashrate support; the high-end version probably needs 30TOPS hashrate support, while the enhanced version needs 100TOPS hashrate support.
For the chip platform, the intelligent driving technology MAXIEYE does not have clear requirements, can adapt to a variety of chips, basically no matter what chip the car company chooses, it can quickly complete the adaptation.
It can be said that the solution provided by maxieye of intelligent driving technology is very flexible, and there is a lot of choice in terms of function and cost, and the benefits of this are also obvious, and car companies can choose the program according to their own needs of functions, configurations and even cost requirements.
In this way, many models priced at 100,000 can also have the opportunity to be equipped with pilot assisted driving.
Fourth, the introduction of FPP integration path planning to reduce the takeover rate
In addition to being able to get on the car flexibly, MAXIEYE also solves many of the current problems of pilot assisted driving, such as obstacle recognition, vehicle congestion, high-precision map/positioning loss and driving experience.
Previously, Tesla hit a large sloping truck after opening the NOA, which also shows that the current pilot assist driver has some problems in identifying obstacles.
Smart driving technology MAXIEYE also took this problem into account and also made targeted treatment.
It is understood that the intelligent driving technology MAXIEYE currently mainly responds to the identification of special obstacles by strengthening learning. For some more complex obstacles, the company will generate a 3D box, using information such as straight points and four corners to restore the shape of the obstacle as much as possible, and after identifying the obstacle, it will choose to remind the driver.
In terms of responding to vehicle congestion, Guo Enqing said that the current NOM system can basically cope with all cut in scenarios except malicious congestion.
In the current stage of pilot assisted driving, high-precision maps are a very important tool, but high-precision maps will also face the problem of loss or incomplete coverage, and maxieye of intelligent driving technology has also done a lot of processing. For example, the company has developed Converged Path Planning (Fused Path Planning) to address typical problems in special conditions where system instability and frequent exits degrade the driving experience.
Guo Enqing introduced that when the vehicle is driving on the road, there is a relatively clear traffic flow information in front, and the intelligent driving technology MAXIEYE will combine the lane line information to form a lane line topology, so that the vehicle can continue to move forward.
At the same time, maxieye also refers to the fence and guardrail information on the road, and when the lane line disappears or is blocked, the road information can be supplemented according to the guardrail information.
In addition, smart driving technology MAXIEYE also refers to the information of the navigation map, although the positioning of the navigation map is not very accurate, but it can drive the vehicle to the optimal position according to the trend of travel.
Combined with high-precision maps, navigation maps, guardrails, lane lines and other information, NOM can deal with the problem of high-precision map coverage/loss of positioning, and realize lane changes and entry and exit ramps through perception. That is to say, the smart driving technology MAXIEYE will not rely heavily on high-precision maps.
It is not difficult to find that through different hardware solutions, maxieye, intelligent driving technology, can provide technology to more car companies, so that the models of these car companies can achieve pilot assistance driving. At the same time, the company has further improved the vehicle's ability to perceive and plan the path, further ensuring the stability of the system.
▲Smart driving technology MAXIEYE NOM safety avoidance big car demonstration
In terms of driving experience, maxieye, intelligent driving technology, has also made some designs, for example, drivers can choose driving modes according to their own needs. If the driver wants comfort mode, the vehicle will reduce the number of lane changes, while if the driver wants to commute efficiently, the vehicle may change lanes more often.
It can be said that the NOM system of smart driving technology MAXIEYE almost takes into account all aspects of the pilot auxiliary driving process, and the stability of the system is very high, and I believe that after the official mass production, it will also get a good market response.
Fifth, adhere to the L1 ~ L5 path to accelerate the landing of automatic driving
Being able to launch such a relatively mature pilot assistance system in more than a year is also inseparable from the strategic layout of intelligent driving technology.
As of 2020, L0-L1 safety features such as MAXIEYE's AEBLDWFCW have landed on hundreds of thousands of commercial vehicles.
After gaining a foothold in the commercial vehicle market, MAXIEYE began to lay out in the field of passenger cars, and in the field of passenger cars, the company adopted a path of gradual development. In 2021, the L2-level MAXIPILOT1.0 full-speed intelligent cruise system that solves the driving comfort problem will be released for mass production, and at the same time, the OTA data closed loop will be opened up, and data and technical barriers will be built for higher-level system solutions. Today, MAXIEYE released the Pilot AssistEd Driving System NOM and said that it will officially start mass production in August this year.
▲The development path of MAXIEYE of intelligent driving technology
In this development process, smart driving technology MAXIEYE has also accumulated a large number of technical foundations, in visual perception, regulation and control have been self-researched, greatly reducing the perception and control of cross-platform research and development of the error superposition, to the greatest extent to ensure the technical performance of the minability and product stability.
With the continuous mass production of products, MAXIEYE, a smart driving technology, can also collect more actual road data, continuously improve autonomous driving technology, gradually achieve higher levels of automatic driving, and ultimately empower the technical landing and service of smart travel rich scenarios.