Car stuff (public number: chedongxi)
The author | Wooden rice
Edit the | Xiao Han
A few days ago, the 2021 California DMV autonomous driving test results were officially released, which aroused the attention of the industry.
Judging from the Robotaxi autonomous driving report card of the California DMV, the test mileage of the entire Robotaxi industry is constantly refreshing, and unmanned taxis are also landing rapidly, especially in China and the United States.
However, there are still a series of problems in the current unmanned taxi landing, and there is still a long way to go from true scale and commercialization.
Among them, how to achieve true unmanned, expand the autonomous driving area, and increase the scale of the unmanned fleet are the primary problems for Robotaxi to truly achieve commercialization.
Not long ago, the domestic autonomous driving start-up company AutoX preemptively handed over a solution to the problem - the domestic autonomous driving area exceeded 1,000 square kilometers, the size of the unmanned fleet also exceeded 1,000 units, and it is also the first domestic startup to get the California fully unmanned autonomous driving test...
So how exactly does AutoX solve this landing problem? Recently, Che Dongxi and Professor Xiao Jianxiong, the founder and CEO of AutoX, conducted an interview and exchange, and got the answer from it.
First, the three major problems do not solve the robotaxi is difficult to commercialize
In recent years, with the continuous acceleration of the development speed of frontier fields such as intelligent networked vehicles and intelligent transportation, a large amount of capital has entered the core track of automatic driving. One of the most eye-catching is a number of Robotaxi companies, from time to time to report hundreds of millions of dollars, or even more than a dozen, two billion dollars of huge financing, stirring the nerves of the entire industry, and even the whole society.
But if you want to really promote the commercialization of Robotaxi, the first problem is unmanned.
Because in the final analysis, the biggest difference between Robotaxi and the current online car and taxi mode is whether there is a human driver. This is the basis for Robotaxi's commercial value.
But at present, only a few head companies in the world have reached the technical level of all unmanned people. The world's most gold-rich all-unmanned test license is the California DMV's all-unmanned test license. However, at present, there are only 7 companies that have obtained the California DMV full unmanned test license, namely Waymo, Nuro, AutoX Antu, Zoox, Cruise, Baidu Apollo and Wenyuan Zhixing, and most of the remaining players are still in the stage of equipping security personnel.
Generally speaking, whether it is in the driver's seat or in the rear seat equipped with safety officers, the purpose is to take over the driving in an emergency, but in the end it has to develop in the direction of no one.
In addition to unmanned, the current Robotaxi is also facing the problem of front-loading mass production.
A Robotaxi needs to go through a complex process before it hits the road. First of all, there is a problem in the selection of models, that is, there are not many models on the market that can guarantee all-unmanned autonomous driving. AutoX, Waymo and other companies use Chrysler Grand Jielong, Baidu Apollo uses Hongqi, and Huawei cooperates with BAIC...
▲AutoX is a self-driving car based on the Chrysler Grand Jaylon model
And after choosing the right model, the adaptation of the vehicle to the automatic driving software and hardware also requires a long period of complex debugging, so the cycle from the installation of automatic driving software and hardware to the final mass production of unmanned vehicles will be relatively long and the cost is also higher.
In addition, the size of the team is also an important problem for Robotaxi to land. From the perspective of passengers, the density of the fleet is not high, there is no way to achieve truly convenient travel; from the perspective of service providers, the size of the fleet is not large, one is that there is no way to accumulate more data to improve the automatic driving system; the other is that it is impossible to achieve large-scale commercialization.
Finally, there is the conundrum of driving routes.
At present, how to deal with complex road scenarios is still a major technical difficulty in front of autonomous driving companies, which has led to many Robotaxi fleets being unable to cope with complex and changeable routes, which can only be limited to limited autonomous driving areas, and cannot achieve point-to-point travel services, which is difficult to meet the daily travel needs of passengers.
Therefore, if it is impossible to broaden the territory of autonomous driving and increase the solutions to complex road conditions, then Robotaxi will be difficult to talk about practical applications, let alone form a real commercialization.
Second, sitting on the largest fleet in the country This Chinese company gave the answer
In response to the above four major problems, AutoX, the head of China's Robotaxi company, recently gave its own answer.
In the interview, AutoX CEO Xiao Jianxiong told Che dong that in terms of all-human, AutoX is the first autonomous driving company in China to obtain a California DMV fully unmanned operation license, the first company in China to carry out fully unmanned testing on the open roads of first-tier cities, and the only autonomous driving company that has been carrying out large-scale fully unmanned Robotaxi operations for many years. And AutoX has been conducting unmanned testing and operation in Pingshan District, Shenzhen for more than a year, and still maintains a record of zero accidents.
Not long ago, AutoX just released a series of progress in The operation of Robotaxi, including the realization of the largest autonomous driving area in China and the largest fleet size.
It is reported that AutoX has carried out autonomous driving road tests in the four first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, with a total area of more than 1,000 square kilometers. AutoX unmanned fleets can drive smoothly in these areas, from main roads to the "capillaries" of urban villages, with wide coverage and complex road conditions, which is the first case in China's autonomous driving operation.
▲AutoX unmanned vehicle autonomous driving road test (unprotected left turn)
Xiao Jianxiong told Che Dongxi that in this 1,000 square kilometers, it includes 168 square kilometers of fully unmanned area - that is, the administrative area of the whole district of Pingshan District in Shenzhen, which is also the largest fully unmanned driving operation area in China.
According to him, because Pingshan District is not the core administrative region of Shenzhen, there are still a large number of construction projects, so at that time, when conducting road tests, there were also many problems. For example, there are many construction projects on the road caused by floating dust, lidar also has reflections when sweeping dust (easy to confuse the perception system), and the early AutoX team also spent a lot of time dealing with it.
After the continuous expansion of the operating area, AutoX has also accumulated a lot of fully unmanned test data, which can gradually achieve the same level as the normal human driving online ride-hailing service.
In addition to the largest autonomous driving area in China, AutoX also officially announced that the scale of its unmanned fleet has reached the order of 1,000 units. It is worth noting that these 1,000 unmanned vehicles have now rolled off the production line, distributed in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Silicon Valley (some of which need to be reviewed by local regulatory authorities and licensed before they can be on the road). This means that AutoX has once again achieved an industry breakthrough in vehicle density.
▲AutoX unmanned vehicles, only one of the batches of vehicles off the production line in the picture, the batch has a total of more than 400 units
Previously, the world's largest Robotaxi fleet came from Waymo, the parent company of Google, and also had about 1,000 units (including 693 in California and more than 300 in Arizona), including Chrysler Pacifica Grand Jaylon and Jaguar I-Pace. The autonomous driving fleets of other domestic companies are in the order of hundreds.
That is to say, now the size of AutoX's unmanned fleet has been equal to that of big brother Waymo, becoming the largest unmanned fleet in China.
Xiao Jianxiong revealed that most of the 1,000 unmanned vehicles in this batch are Chrysler Pacifica Grand Victory Dragon, and AutoX is currently Chrysler's only partner in China.
▲AutoX unmanned vehicle in operation
In response to the problem of front-loading mass production, Xiao Jianxiong said that the current autoX unmanned fleet has a full set of vehicle-level redundancy systems, including redundant wire control systems, to meet the safety requirements of truly unmanned people.
In terms of cost, Xiao Jianxiong told Che dong: "Cheap cars do not have redundant wire control. Our starting point is safety first, that is, the premise of our consideration of cost is whether we can achieve unmanned driving, if we use low-cost cars and cannot achieve unmanned driving, it is the biggest waste. ”
In the unmanned test, AutoX also realized any point-to-point automatic driving, and realized that the streets and alleys can be reached in the test to meet the normal travel needs of passengers.
In fact, the realization of arbitrary point-to-point autonomous driving is also very important for the real landing of Robotaxi.
Because for users, the limited area range, can not point-to-point travel service value is low, it is difficult to meet their daily travel needs, RoboTaxi is also difficult to talk about practical applications, let alone the formation of real commercialization.
As early as 2019, AutoX has accumulated autonomous driving experience in 13 cities around the world. The release of autoX with more than 1,000 square kilometers of autonomous driving domain is an important step for China's Robotaxi application to truly enter the homes of ordinary people.
Returning to the original question, what is the significance of the realization of a 1,000 square kilometer autonomous driving area, 1,000 unmanned fleet sizes, and arbitrary point-to-point autonomous driving for the commercial use of Robotaxi?
First, from the perspective of technology research and development, a larger autonomous driving area means that the fleet can encounter more problems, collect more data, and then solve these problems. After solving the problems in this area one by one, unmanned vehicles can operate in these areas.
Second, at the landing application level, this is also an important accumulation of Robotaxi mass production deployment. After the technology matures, the density of vehicles, the wide coverage area of autonomous driving, and the addition of arbitrary point-to-point autonomous driving will be able to promote Robotaxi's commercial services.
Through some exchanges, the car thing felt that AutoX has become one of the players closest to the scale commercialization of Robotaxi.
Third, the engineer team of more than 1,000 people Unmanned vehicles from the factory off the line
What is the difference between AutoX and its achievements?
First of all, from the perspective of the founders, AutoX has a good technical background.
CEO Xiao Jianxiong was born in Guangdong, and later went to the United States to study for a doctorate in computer science at MIT, after graduation, Xiao Jianxiong entered the Computer Department of Princeton, and during this period, he opened up two research areas of RGB-D scene analysis and three-dimensional deep learning, which were transformed into applications, namely unmanned driving, indoor SLAM and robot control.
In 2014 and 2015, Xiao jianxiong won consecutive Google Research Awards and became a leader in computer vision research at Princeton University. However, at the peak of his academic career, Xiao Jianxiong decided to move into the industry and founded AutoX, an autonomous driving company.
▲Xiao Jianxiong, founder of AutoX and an expert in the field of computer vision and autonomous driving
Earlier, he told the media that he wanted to build AutoX into a leading international company in the field of autonomous driving. AutoX, which is born in a science class, has naturally won the favor of capital many times.
Second, AutoX has always been very focused on the business - only doing unmanned Robotaxi.
Xiao Jianxiong told Che That AutoX has been doing all-unmanned tests, and has a very strong AI team, through a large number of data training AI algorithms, to achieve all-unmanned technical conditions.
For example, in the two aspects of the difficult game problem and target behavior prediction in automatic driving, the AutoX team mainly relies on data-driven, so the team will go directly to the road to collect the driving behavior of a large number of cars, and then train the AI through the collected data.
In addition, AutoX also provides strong support in terms of team size.
At present, AutoX has a R&D technical team of more than 1,000 people, covering five major R&D centers in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Silicon Valley. Xiao Jianxiong said that in 2022, AutoX will continue to increase recruitment efforts and add 1,000 new autonomous driving technology positions.
Finally, AutoX also hides a secret weapon - an all-driverless gigafactory and operation center.
In July last year, the AutoX "Gigafactory" was officially completed, designed and built for the mass production of fully driverless vehicles, and since the use of the production line, it has maintained full operation and high-speed mass production.
▲AutoX fully unmanned Robotaxi production line
The official announcement of 1,000 unmanned vehicles are also from the AutoX "super factory" off the production line, it can be said that with its own super factory, AutoX's unmanned fleet mass production will be more comfortable.
Secondly, in order to support the high-density testing and operation of more than 1,000 unmanned vehicles in a large area of more than 1,000 square kilometers, AutoX has established ten major operation centers around the world. In Shenzhen alone, AutoX has built four major operation centers, covering Nanshan, Futian, Pingshan and other districts, with a full range of network coverage of the operation area.
It is reported that AutoX's ten operation centers have built a complete set of Robotaxi operation and maintenance systems, equipped with charging piles, high-speed networks, lifts, sensor calibration turntables and other professional operation and maintenance equipment, supporting standardized and automated operations from vehicle maintenance, repair, cleaning, maintenance, technical operation and maintenance, calibration, testing, verification, to software and hardware upgrades.
▲AutoX operation center
Through this interview, Chedong saw autoX's breakthrough in solving the problem of all-unmanned, autonomous driving areas and the size of unmanned fleets. In terms of commercializing Robotaxi, AutoX has come up with its own set of solutions.
As early as 2017, AutoX unmanned vehicles began to test the core bustling road conditions in Shenzhen, and it is also the first autonomous driving company in China to enter the test of the cbd downtown area of the first-tier city.
In 5 years, AutoX started from Shenzhen and has now exceeded the 1,000 square kilometers of autonomous driving area and 1,000 unmanned fleets, and it is believed that in the second half of Robotaxi's commercialization, AutoX will also come up with a more eye-catching report card.