On April 18, Jidu officially released the design details of the front part of the first car robot concept car, and the design of the headlights and the lidar at the front cover of the car was clearly visible. So far, Jidu's first front cover and forward dual lidar autonomous driving technology scheme has been exposed for the first time.
At the same time, Dr. Wang Weibao, head of Jidu Intelligent Driving, shared the latest progress of Jidu automotive robots. Recently, Jidu SIMUCar (Software Integration Mule Car) has been iteratively upgraded to version 2.0, and its automatic driving system has been added to the lidar sensor, and integrated with jidu's self-developed high-level automatic driving intelligent architecture JET1.0 (electronic and electrical architecture + SOA). At present, the world's highest computing power car chips Nvidia Orin and Hesai AT128 semi-solid-state lidar have been put on the car to participate in the test of the jidu automatic driving system. This means that the high-end autonomous driving technology solution for mass production, which is based on Apollo's unmanned autonomous driving capability, has been fully exposed for the first time.
Wang Weibao said that the pure vision and lidar autonomous driving scheme being tested and developed in the SIMUCar 2.0 stage is an independent dual system that can achieve "true redundancy" after mass production. Compared with the traditional solution, the two sets of automatic driving solutions of Jidu are mutual backup and complement each other, and the two sets of solutions can not only drive themselves efficiently, but also efficiently coordinate.
In addition, jidu's first automotive robot concept car's lidar solution is extremely innovative. The location of the lidar is not only distinctive, the appearance is very plus, and the configuration of its dual lidar also shows a safety advantage. First of all, the point cloud field of view of dual lidar is wider and safer, compared with the 120-degree FOV design of single radar, the frontal dual radar can achieve horizontal 180-degree FOV coverage, and in the driving scenes such as "ghost probes" and left and right obstructions, the recognition ability of left and right traversing pedestrians or obstacles is stronger. Secondly, the identification of the key area of the vehicle is more accurate, in the area of 60 degrees FOV directly in front of the vehicle, the dual lidar can be doubled and overlapped, and the point cloud data on the target is more, and the recognition accuracy is higher. Third, in terms of the redundancy safety of high-level automatic driving, dual lidar can be mutually safe and redundant, which is more reliable than the single lidar solution.
On the 207th day after its establishment, Jidu pioneered the development process of SIMUCar software integrated analog prototype vehicles, the development of pre-positioned automatic driving functions and digital intelligent cockpits, demonstrating the innovation and efficiency of technology companies in the field of intelligent car development, and setting a record for leading the industry. Jidu SIMUCar 1.0 has successfully achieved high-speed and urban dual-domain integration in December last year, and completed the integration and adaptation with Jidu Intelligent Architecture JET1.0 at the end of February this year. Wang Weibao revealed that in December last year, SIMACar achieved dual-domain integration of automatic driving, which was achieved only by relying on pure vision solutions, and the last stage of lidar has not yet been tested.
Wang Weibao believes that the SIMUCar 1.0 stage, like a person's primary school stage, is a key period to lay a good foundation, focusing more on the basic capacity building of automatic driving, including the development of software architecture and related basic functional logic, and adapting to the chassis. SIMUCar 2.0 is like the middle school stage, which is a period of gradual improvement and formation of basic capabilities, in this stage, the underlying architecture of SIMUCar has been upgraded to a high-level autonomous driving intelligent architecture JET (JIDU Evolving Technology) developed by jidu, including the electronic and electrical architecture EEA and the vehicle operating system SOA. At this time, the relevant domain controllers and sensors have gradually reached the mass production state, and some basic automatic driving capabilities, including ADAS functions, parking, intelligent interaction, etc., will gradually reach the mass production state.
Jidu also revealed that the first large-scale brand conference ROBBODAY, which was originally scheduled to be held in April, will be postponed due to the epidemic. Previously, Jidu has announced that it will release its first automotive robot concept car in 2022 and unveiled it at this year's Beijing Auto Show. Its first mass-produced automotive robot will be launched and delivered in 2023, which will have high-level autonomous driving capabilities and bring users a high-level autonomous driving experience in multiple scenarios. At present, Jidu has started the research and development and pre-research of follow-up models, and its second mass production car will be expected to be released at the Guangzhou Auto Show at the end of this year.