Today Ideal released the fourth wave of spoilers about the L9, this time focusing on assisted driving, in addition to a copy, Ideal also released a video showing the world through the eyes of L9.
Although the general hardware is consistent with the new forces of the first echelon, we have also found a lot of ideal careful thinking.
The old rule first look at the core information:
1 x 128-line lidar
4 x 360° surround view cameras (2 MP)
7 driver assistance cameras (6 x 8 million, 1 x 2 million)
2 x NVIDIA Orin X processors (508 TOPS hashrate)
5 intelligent driver assistance lights
Capacitive steering wheel
Full stack self-developed
8 megapixel world
First of all, the ideal L9 unsurprisingly upgraded the assisted driving camera to 8 million pixels, which is a very clear industry trend, with the improvement of assisted driving ability, the demand for perception has also been greatly improved, and the visual camera as the main sensor is bound to preemptively attack.
Compared with 2 million pixels, the pixels of perceiving objects such as cone barrels and pedestrians in the picture increase significantly, and more pixels can help the system perceive earlier and make more accurate judgments.
In the early days, due to the low pixels, in order to achieve a wider range of perception, Tesla, Weilai and other models are equipped with 3 front cameras, a medium focal length camera as the main force, a telephoto responsible for ultra-long-distance detection, and a wide angle to reduce the forward perception blind spot.
As the number of pixels increased, we began to see on more and more models that the front-facing tri-eye camera was gradually replaced by 2 cameras.
On the ideal L9, two forward 8-megapixel cameras provide 120-degree wide-angle coverage while taking into account objects such as vehicles, pedestrians and cone barrels up to 550 meters away.
In addition, the ideal L9 has two 8MP side front cameras, two 8 million side front cameras and 1 x 2 million rear camera to complete the 360-degree perception of the vehicle's body.
Due to the small demand for positive and rear perception, the ideal is also very "keyed" with a 2 million pixel camera.
The ideal use of 4 2-megapixel cameras in terms of surround view has been improved compared to the current model, but if you want to improve the effect of surround view, you need to make more efforts in the software in terms of screen stitching, distortion control and the effect of the low-light environment, and do not expand here.
In addition to the ability to achieve 360° reversing images, these four surround views are also used for visual parking systems that achieve visual fusion.
I am more curious, the ideal will be these 4 surround view also used as auxiliary driving perception, in the ideal released video can be seen, the side rear camera in order to take into account the long-distance detection, in the state of the lateral vehicle close, the picture will be occupied by the entire vehicle, so the close perception ability is weak, if you start the surround view camera can improve the perception of the lateral close distance, this is also the practice of some car companies, but behind the higher requirements of the algorithm.
Notice the bottom left
Lidar is indispensable
In the last issue of the appearance of the exposé we have made some analysis of the lidar, here is a simple review and then make a supplement.
Ideal, like Weilai, puts lidar on the roof of the car, and has 3 advantages:
Because the radar position is higher, whether it is a congested road section or a long-distance object, it can have a better detection effect;
Because the radar position is on the roof of the car, not in the bumper, the possibility of damage is less likely to occur in the event of a bump, and the cost of subsequent maintenance is lower;
Since the radar position is on the roof, the shape of the bumper does not have to consider the radar, and it can have better results when doing pedestrian safety collisions.
The disadvantages also have 3 points:
Although the radar manufacturers have tried their best to control the size of the radar, the vehicle effect is still very abrupt, and compared to the WEILAI ET7, the ideal L9 has a rougher treatment in the shape;
Because lidar needs to transmit a large amount of data when working, and needs to do a good job of heat dissipation, it will occupy more space on the roof, and here we hope that it will not occupy too much internal head space;
The bulge in the roof introduces more wind noise, which is a test of the drag coefficient and NVH of the ideal L9.
On the model of lidar, as far as we know, the SEMI-solid-state lidar of Hesai Technology AT128 is used, the laser wiring beam is 128 lines, the laser wavelength is 905 nm, the maximum detection distance is 200 meters at 10% reflectivity, and the field viewing angle is 120° x 25.4°.
The highlight of the ideal lidar is the use of 128 laser emitters, vertically arranged, forming a laser line, and then through a 1-dimensional rotating mirror, the line into a surface, to achieve the detection of the forward environment.
Compared with using 1 laser emitter, through a 2-dimensional lens, first from point to line, and then from line to surface, the ideal lidar can obtain a higher point cloud density, analogous to a camera, which is equivalent to having a higher resolution.
Unfortunately, the radar has a wavelength of 905 nm, which is lower than 1,550 nm and has a closer detection distance.
As for the final effect, we can only wait for the mass production to be delivered, and then talk about the actual experience.
508 TOPS hash rate + self-developed software
In order to process the information generated by the above sensors, 2 NVIDIA Orin X autopilot chips are ideally used.
In terms of algorithms, Ideal officially decided to switch from supplier collaboration to full-stack self-development in early 2021, and the 2021 Ideal ONE equipped with Horizon Journey 3 chips is the first answer sheet handed over by Ideal Self-developed Algorithm.
Compared with Xiaopeng, which began full-stack self-research in 19 years, the ideal self-research time point is later, and whether it can catch up with Xiaopeng G9 on L9 also needs time to test.
Millimeter-wave radar is suspicious
After analyzing all the hardware, it can be found that from beginning to end, the ideal did not mention millimeter-wave radar, here we can make a bold guess: one possibility is the same as the ideal ONE using 5 millimeter-wave radar, but the official does not mention; the other possibility is that the ideal L9 does not have millimeter-wave radar.
The copywriting lists all the perception hardware and detailed parameters of ADAS in detail, except for the millimeter radar information, so we think that the ideal L9 is most likely not equipped with millimeter wave radar.
In the autonomous driving industry, the evaluation of millimeter-wave radar has been mixed, in the early stage of weak visual algorithms, millimeter-wave radar provides valuable distance information for vehicles, but with the iteration of visual algorithms, the emergence of multi-camera solutions, the accuracy of visual information is getting higher and higher, and millimeter waves have appeared more and more interference information.
There are autonomous driving industry engineers who reveal to us that too many types of sensors, the difficulty of algorithm fusion is very high, and when the results are inconsistent, you will be very entangled with who to listen to.
Other details
The ideal L9 driver assistance is named AD Max;
The ideal L9 powertrain, steering system, braking system and computing power platform power supply system are designed with redundancy;
The ideal L9 features a capacitive sensing steering wheel, fatigue and attention reminder system;
The main driver's seat adopts electric preload belt;
The Ideal L9 is equipped with 5 intelligent driver assistance lights, located under the vehicle's four corners and taillight strips;
In-car 3D ToF sensors and exterior cameras enable sentry mode covering the inside and outside of the vehicle.
Author: June 3
Edit: June 3
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