Does the ideal L9 have millimeter wave radar?!
Hello, the officials who pay attention to the ideal L9, it is time to reserve the program every Wednesday.
Before talking about the right topic, let's say that the ideal car really squeezes the traffic password in its own hands, squeezing the toothpaste-like spoiler way to give full play to the high heat of the ideal L9. We can boldly predict here, it is likely that after a few waves of spoilers, the ideal L9 will not hold a large-scale product launch, but directly open a pre-sale at the Beijing Auto Show, the cost is saved to earn, I would like to call it the most successful communication case (doge) in the automotive circle in 2022.
The spoiler finally brings two messages:
The flagship intelligent driving system developed in-house: the ideal AD Max
Flagship-grade body safety protection
Ambitious car companies are developing themselves
With the rise of the domestic new car manufacturing movement, there is also the concept of "full-stack self-research", among the three head new car manufacturers we are familiar with, Xiaopeng Automobile, which regards itself as a technology company, is the first company to open a full-stack self-developed automatic driving system, followed by Ideal and Weilai.
Of course, there are purer players in the smart automotive industry, such as zero-run cars. Zhu Jiangming, the founder of Zero Run Car, was the chairman of the security monitoring company Dahua Co., Ltd., and he also brought the experience of self-developed camera equipment in the Dahua period to zero-run cars, and Zero Run Cars not only developed self-developed vehicle-level high-definition cameras, but even automatic driving chips are self-developed.
According to ideal auto's public information, ideal first mentioned the self-developed driver assistance system at the signing ceremony with NVIDIA on September 22, 2020. At that time, Ideal announced that it would use NVIDIA ORIN chip as a smart driving system chip for the full-size SUV mass production in 2022, that is, the chip solution with the final force of 508TOPS on the L9 today, provided by Desay SV to provide intelligent driving domain controllers, and Ideal will realize the full-stack self-development of intelligent driving systems on the L9.
Ideal AD Max. The full-stack self-developed perception, decision-making, planning and control software is used to ensure the reliability and high growth of the system.
We will find a phenomenon that all the head players of smart cars have implemented or are developing their own autonomous driving system algorithms, and many global car companies are not eager to open self-developed algorithms, but rely on packaging algorithms provided by suppliers. So what are the benefits of self-research? The most critical point is to calmly deal with functional iterations.
It is obvious that the role of contemporary car companies is no longer that of a simple car manufacturer, they are more willing to stand in the position of users and think about how to provide a better set of mobility solutions, and this transformation is the reason for the rise of the buzzword "user co-creation" in recent years.
The ideal AD intelligent driving system used above ideal ONE is developed by ideal in cooperation with chip supplier Horizon, and after two years of official delivery of ideal ONE, the new ideal AD MAX intelligent driving system has more Chinese road characteristics. Among them, the AEB automatic emergency braking function is optimized for The road conditions in China, enhances the identification of pedestrians and two-wheelers, effectively reduces the incidence of traffic accidents, and can also realize the rapid iteration of functions through full-stack self-research capabilities.
In addition, the ideal L9 adopts a capacitive steering wheel, which can better identify whether the user is holding the steering wheel in the auxiliary driving scenario, without deliberately shaking the steering wheel for identification, and improve the user experience in the auxiliary driving scenario.
Obviously, "user experience" has become the most important point for get-off companies in the era of smart cars, and all car companies that enter the self-developed track understand that they are closely connected with users, even if solving user feedback is the key to building a brand "moat".
Is there a millimeter-wave radar?
In terms of perception hardware for intelligent driving systems, the Ideal L9 incorporates:
A 128-thread semi-solid-state lidar
6 x 8MP cameras
5 x 2MP cameras
Millimeter Wave Radar: Unknown
The fact is that the spoilers of the ideal L9 do not indicate whether the car is equipped with millimeter wave radar, since the ideal does not say, that is, there is no millimeter wave radar? But I always felt that things were not so simple.
When lidar has not yet entered, millimeter-wave radar and high-definition cameras are a golden combination, the role of millimeter-wave radar is to detect the distance of the target object, and the role of vision is to image the target. In an era when there were no cameras involved in perception, a vehicle's millimeter-wave radar could only sense an object in front of it and not know what it was, but now the vehicle has more information, which is why we can see clearly demarcated bicycles, motorcycles, cars, vans, ice cream tubes and bins in the ADAS visual interface of the vehicle.
Of course, the potential ability of the camera to combine AI algorithms is very strong, in theory, pure visual algorithms alone can also complete the automatic driving of vehicles, here has to cue the lidar as a dung Ma Yilong. The ideal L9's lidar can only cover the 120-degree angle ahead, and without millimeter-wave radar assistance, the vehicle's remaining 240-degree angle is only the camera to determine the object and the distance to the object.
In fact, in the industry cognition, visual algorithms and fusion algorithms are the existence of their own advantages and disadvantages, the advantage of a single visual algorithm is that the decision-making layer only needs to receive the camera's information, but the visual algorithm is not completely rational, for example, we often say that the "ghost brake" phenomenon, is because the visual algorithm mistakenly treats the shadow as an object. Although the fusion algorithm has millimeter-wave radar for accurate ranging, there will also be a phenomenon that the camera and the millimeter-wave radar measurement data are not uniform, and it is difficult to judge when two different data are given to the decision-making level.
Returning to the question of whether the ideal L9 will be equipped with millimeter-wave radar, the first thing to think about is whether the ideal device has the ability to do vision algorithms, as we mentioned above, the ideal only began to work on the full-stack self-developed intelligent driving system in September 2020, and it has only been a year and a half today.
Friends who pay close attention to Tesla's movements must know that pure visual algorithms are a very test of AI capabilities, Tesla not only has 2 million cars around the world running data for them, but even equipped with lidar on test cars to adjust the data of visual algorithms. Last year's Tesla AI DAY, Tesla released the Dojo supercomputer, a major role is the layout of high-intensity computing capabilities in the cloud, in order to tesla's pure visual algorithm products into the full automation to prepare, this matter also proved on the side of the landing vision algorithm is not an overnight thing.
Another point, the ideal ONE in May 2021 when the redesign of the 8 million pixel high-definition camera, so far less than a year, the earliest ideal ONE is a 2 million camera auxiliary millimeter wave radar work solution, if the upcoming mass production of the ideal L9 using visual algorithms, for the ideal will be a very big technological breakthrough. So rationally, everyone doesn't think that the ideal L9 will completely remove the millimeter-wave radar.
But there is also another possibility: Ideal is rapidly building a visual algorithm system, before the ideal in the ideal ONE intelligent driving system and horizon cooperation algorithm is the beginning of learning from suppliers and quickly improve their own system, and NIVIDIA contract to purchase ORIN chips may also be a reserve of stronger computing power platform to prepare for visual algorithms. If millimeter-wave radar is actually cut off on the L9, it's a BIG NEWS.
So far, the Ideal L9 has not been registered with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, nor has it completed the SoP, and there is a possibility of adjustment before there is an SoP. So the ideal is not yet to think of the millimeter wave radar to carry how many problems? After consulting with industry insiders, we learned that generally key components require a long period of system verification, and the possibility of making changes within one year is very small.
There is another reference object for millimeter-wave radar, the Mobileye Q5h scheme adopted by Extreme Kr 001, which cuts the angle millimeter-wave radar and retains only the pre-millimeter-wave radar. Although there are 12 ultrasonic radars on it, the participation of ultrasonic radars in the scenes of urban pilot assistance and high-speed lane change is very small, and it is mostly used to cope with the distance measurement of small scenes such as automatic parking.
The most comprehensive lidar?
On the new ideal L9, lidar arrives. The ideal use of Hesai Technology's AT128, in the past of all the upcoming lidar models released, it is currently known that only the ideal has chosen Hesai Technology's lidar. In addition to Hesai Technology, the mainstream lidar brands in the market include Sagitar Juchuang (Xiaopeng G9, WM M7, Confidant L7), Huawei (Polar Fox α S, Nezha S, Salon Mech Dragon, Avita 11), Tudtong (NIO ET7), Luminar (Feifan R7).
According to the laser wavelength, the mainstream lidar can be divided into 905nm and 1550nm two camps, and after the combination of resolution, 10% reflectivity detection distance, the number of lasers, the number of point clouds and other data, it can be seen that the Hesai AT128 lidar is indeed one of the best products in the market.
It is worth noting that the Hesai AT128 is the highest resolution lidar on the market, thanks to the 128 vertically arranged lasers on it, which convert the laser lines into surfaces through 1-dimensional prisms, making its point cloud number and resolution significantly higher than other single laser lidars on the market.
Although lidar is the most indispensable high-precision sensor in contemporary smart cars, it is only a tool, whether it can play the real power of this tool depends on the ability of engineers to design algorithms and functions, after all, experience is the core element of judging the quality of a product, waiting for the delivery of the mass production car, we will further follow up the ideal L9 intelligent driving experience.
Body safety information
The Ideal L9 is equipped with a flagship safety body structure with a body torsional stiffness that exceeds its class, and is used in over 80% of high-strength and thermoformed steels, achieving excellent levels in the most demanding double-sided 25% bias crash tests. The front is equipped with double aluminum alloy anti-collision beams, which can effectively decompose the frontal impact force in the event of a collision, and maximize the safety of every passenger in the car.
The ideal L9 battery pack features a dual protective design consisting of side guard beams and an aluminum alloy housing to keep the battery pack safe even during harsh side column bump and bottom support tests.
epilogue
As of today, we've followed four spoilers about the Ideal L9, and after combining the Ideal L9's smart cockpit, space dimensions, power configuration, smart driving, and a price of 450,000-500,000, the title of "Product Power Monster" is already obvious.
Everything is always difficult at the beginning, in my opinion, the ideal L9 is only a beginning of the ideal car, and now I am more looking forward to what kind of products the ideal car will launch in other market segments, and whether these products can sell more than 10,000 in each market segment. Of course, it is also expected to know what the mystery of millimeter-wave radar is.