Car stuff (public number: chedongxi)
Author | The Way
Edit | Juice
Baidu obtained the first batch of autonomous driving licenses in China, and then Baidu's Radish Run platform can open robotaxi in Beijing!
▲Baidu was the first to obtain the unmanned license for autonomous driving
According to the news of Chedong on April 29, yesterday morning, Baidu Apollo was allowed to conduct an unmanned manned test on the actual road of Yizhuang, and some media were also invited to experience the radish fast running unmanned vehicle on the same day.
In the process of experience, it was found that after the main driver of the turnip fast running autonomous vehicle was unmanned, the vehicle ran very smoothly, and the feeling was even better than that of some online ride-hailing vehicles, and the safety officer of the co-driver and the cloud driver also provided a good safety guarantee.
At the same time, out of curiosity about the safety and development of the unmanned manned technology of Radish Fast Running, Che Dong and other media also interviewed Wei Dong, vice president and chief safety operation officer of Baidu Intelligent Driving Business Group, and Xu Baoqiang, director of Baidu's automotive robot department. Both responsible persons gave more detailed answers, answered questions from the outside world, and alleviated users' concerns about the safety of unmanned driving.
This time, Baidu was the first to obtain the unmanned license for autonomous driving, and officially opened the unmanned autonomous driving travel service in Yizhuang, Beijing. This is not only a new and important breakthrough in the development of autonomous driving in China, but also means that the world's first driverless travel service has been launched in a megacity.
First, the cornering brakes are stable, and the safety officer Yun drives on behalf of the driver to ensure safety
During the experience, the car object registered the "Radish Run" App according to the guidance of the on-site staff, and then queued up to take a taxi at the "Autonomous Driving Experience Station" in Apollo Park.
▲"Autonomous Driving Experience Station" in Apollo Park
Because Baidu has more than 100 self-driving cars and 10 unmanned vehicles within 60 square kilometers of the Beijing Economic Development Zone, if users want to experience unmanned vehicles, they need to select the destination with diamond symbols in the "Radish Run" App.
▲ "Radish Run" App
After the user selects the destination, select the passenger, and then click "Call Vehicle", and the nearby unmanned vehicle will arrive at the user's station later. After the vehicle arrives, the user can only get on the car from the right rear door, and before getting on the car, he needs to scan the QR code behind the vehicle to unlock the door. With good networking, the door is swept open.
▲The QR code at the back of the vehicle
After the user opens the door to enter the vehicle, fastens the seat belt, just click the "Start Trip" button on the display in front of the seat, and the vehicle will automatically start and start the trip.
▲The display in front of the seat
During the driving process of the vehicle, the co-pilot safety officer pays attention to the driving state throughout the process, and will step on the brakes in time in case of emergency. After communicating with the safety officer master of the co-driver, the co-driver also learned that in addition to the right to step on the brakes, the co-driver can also click the three buttons on the central control screen to operate. The three button functions are "Honking", "Continue Driving" and "Check Order Status".
Among them, the honking operation can be completed by the safety officer or by the cloud driver. During the ride, the car found that when turning and braking in front of the traffic light, the vehicle horn was completed by the cloud driver, and it was also very timely, almost the same as the ordinary driver.
▲The vehicle makes a right turn
In addition, during the driving process, the turnip fast running unmanned vehicle is very smooth whether it is in a straight line, cornering or automatic braking.
During the straight process, the steering wheel of the unmanned vehicle will also make some slight rotations to adjust the direction of the vehicle in time to ensure that the vehicle is in the middle of the lane. When turning, the steering wheel of the vehicle is also rotated very coherently, and after turning, the steering wheel of the vehicle will soon be adjusted back to its normal position and continue to move forward.
▲Vehicles change lanes
When encountering traffic lights, unmanned vehicles will also prejudge in time and automatically brake in advance to ensure the smooth braking process.
In terms of safety, in addition to the special circumstances, the safety officer will timely brake and other operations to ensure the safety of passengers, and the cloud driver will monitor and take over the unmanned vehicle that encounters problems in time.
In the detailed conversation with the safety officer, the car thing learned that a cloud driver was responsible for the supervision of 3 unmanned vehicles, and more was the takeover of the steering wheel under special circumstances. For example, temporarily prohibited road sections or traffic blocking sections that cannot be smoothly passed.
In addition, the security officer can also use the walkie-talkie to communicate with the cloud driver in time to quickly solve the problems that the system and security personnel cannot solve.
After this experience, the car thing feels that the turnip fast running unmanned autonomous driving travel service is even better than the online ride-hailing service. This is not only because the vehicle automatically goes straight, automatically turns and automatically brakes are relatively smooth, but also because the driving environment of radish fast running is also better, and there will be no driver smoking in the cab, affecting the driving experience.
In terms of price, because the radish run is still in the promotion stage, the fee is more favorable, and the 1.8-kilometer journey costs only 2.52 yuan, while the ordinary online car is at least 11 yuan. Interested readers can take advantage of the offer to experience.
In order to experience the unmanned car in an all-round way, the reporter of the car took two unmanned cars. The round-trip journey is 3.6 kilometers, except for the taxi and waiting time, the car took about 10 minutes, and the speed of the unmanned car is quite OK.
At present, within 60 square kilometers of the Beijing Economic Development Zone, ordinary users can experience unmanned vehicles through the "Radish Run" APP through their mobile phones.
Second, hundreds of thousands of orders have been completed as soon as the end of the year to achieve full unmanned manned
At this Apollo Park Media Open Day, The Car Thing not only experienced the latest unmanned vehicle of Radish Run, but also participated in the relevant media group interview.
During the group visit, Wei Dong, vice president and chief safety operation officer of Baidu Intelligent Driving Business Group, and Xu Baoqiang, director of Baidu's automotive robot department, gave detailed replies on issues such as unmanned vehicle safety and future planning. The following is a distilled response.
▲Wei Dong, vice president of Baidu Intelligent Driving Business Group and chief safety operation officer, was interviewed by the media
1. The unmanned automatic driving service license is strictly assessed, and 20 vehicles will be re-licensed.
Wei Dong, vice president and chief safety operation officer of Baidu's intelligent driving business group, said that the government has strictly defined the safety boundary, and all tests have been designed for unmanned on the traditional test system with many more subdivided and high-standard parameters.
After unmanned, not only the standards of the examination are different, but the supervision and control schemes are different.
▲Baidu Apollo Park exhibition hall
The unmanned license examination not only includes information security, data security and vehicle safety, but also includes the assessment of management personnel, co-driver safety officers, and cloud drivers. Only after these aspects and personnel meet the standards can Baidu get the unmanned autonomous driving service license.
Wei Dong also mentioned that the person in charge of the management committee of the Beijing Economic Development Zone also stressed that from a regulatory point of view, they also have a set of assessment standards for typical scenarios, human-vehicle interaction, and network security.
Wei Dong revealed to the media that 10 Baidu autonomous vehicles built based on Hongqi vehicles have obtained the first batch of unmanned license qualifications, while 30 self-driving cars based on Jihu have also entered the unmanned license qualification application process.
2. The safety of unmanned vehicles is the same as that of humans, and the three-layer safety system ensures safety.
Xu Baoqiang, director of Baidu's automotive robot department, said that before obtaining unmanned testing permits in the fourth quarter of last year, Baidu had done a lot of tests and the results were up to standard, and the overall safety of the vehicle was flat or even surpassed that of human drivers. And this is the core criterion of unmanned.
In terms of technology, Baidu has also built a three-layer security system.
The first layer is the entire aspect of bicycle intelligence. Including basic software capabilities and core algorithms, including 27 million kilometers of road testing, but also including simulation, model such as data-driven, data closed-loop capabilities. These are all designed to validate a complete ability to stay safe on the road.
The second level of security is monitoring and redundancy. In a manned state, this ability is not so important. But when it comes to unmanned driving, this aspect is even more important as the capabilities of the main system continue to increase.
The third layer of the system is cloud driving. Apollo Park is the center of Baidu's entire cloud driving, and other venues also have such centers. Cloud driving is actually Baidu combined with China's unique 5G infrastructure to add a security guarantee for unmanned vehicles.
On the other hand is the overall security mechanism. The guarantee mechanism of the fleet, information security and other peripheral systems, together, are a complete and complete security system. This security system gives Baidu the confidence to use unmanned form to do test operations.
3, radish fast run has completed hundreds of thousands of orders, will have 40 unmanned vehicles.
Wei Dong said that in the third quarter of last year, radish fast running completed 110,000 orders, and in the fourth quarter, more than 210,000 orders were completed. At present, objectively speaking, the average daily single volume and monthly total order volume of radish fast running are still rising, and have entered a process of steady growth.
In the first half of this year, there were also some fluctuations in the number of orders for containment measures due to the epidemic, which he believes is understandable. In terms of fleet size, there are now more than 100 self-driving cars equipped with safety officers in turnip run, as well as 10 unmanned vehicles that have just started to operate today, and 30 unmanned vehicles that will be certified in the back.
▲Radish fast running operation vehicle
4. The goal is to land on large-scale autonomous driving, which will expand the region and reduce costs.
Wei Dong said that Baidu is currently more about allowing the public to begin to accept such a product and a new thing. At this stage, Baidu does not have the current goal of profitability, their goal is the commercialization of large-scale autonomous driving.
If you want to commercialize large-scale autonomous driving, you need several conditions.
Vehicles parked in Apollo Park
First, the geographical scope of coverage should be sufficiently wide. As a physical displacement service, the wider the area of service, the larger the audience that can be served and the larger the market. The size of the market depends on the size of the road area that the government will open to unmanned vehicles in the future.
Second, the cost structure should be relatively reasonable. If the cost structure is not reasonable, the larger the commercialization, the more financial pressure for the enterprise. Companies need to look at this matter relatively rationally. When the cost structure is unreasonable, expanding the scale at this time is not conducive to the health of the enterprise.
Therefore, in the past few years, what Baidu has been doing is to consider how to make the cost of autonomous driving support future large-scale expansion from all dimensions.
The first dimension is hardware. Baidu will continue to integrate hardware capabilities through software technology, reduce hardware consumption, and continuously reduce hardware costs. At the same time, Baidu has a demand for bulk orders, so Baidu's goal is to make its hardware close enough to the existing price range of private cars.
The second dimension is driver cost. Let's not talk about logistics trucks, from the perspective of carrying people in public transportation capacity, public transportation capacity is nothing more than taxis, online ride-hailing cars, and buses. For these scenarios, the cost of the driver is the biggest. However, for the value of commercialization, only by unmanned can the cost structure of autonomous vehicles be subversively changed.
So, when will commercialization mature? On the one hand, the coverage should be large enough that the hardware cost can be reduced through integration capabilities. On the other hand, autonomous vehicles should be able to support unmanned. The realization of these aspects must be a condition for large-scale commercial expansion. Of course, the turning point must be when there is a larger degree of unmannedness.
In the first half of 2022, Beijing, the capital of China, began the demonstration of unmanned vehicles. It actually represents our country's attitude towards this industry and the direction of policy guidance. Moreover, the policies introduced by Beijing are more focused on not being suitable for Yizhuang, but on the reference value of this industry and the value that can be copied on a large scale, which will promote the substantial development of China's automobile industry without humanization.
5. The core of the service is intelligent driving, and it will be fully unmanned at the end of the year at the earliest.
Wei Dong said he had to adjust a definition, and he never emphasized calling turnips a self-driving taxi.
Wei Dong said that they have always believed that the core of autonomous driving services is the use of an intelligent driving process. The service of transporting people's physical displacement is a scene that everyone is used to, and it will have more functions in the future. So they don't want to limit it to a taxi scene at the beginning, they emphasize autonomous driving services, whether it's a manned service or other value-added services in the future.
▲Unmanned vehicles automatically enter the park
He said that from the end of 2020, Beijing will open up a manned test of the main driver. At that time, when Baidu began to carry people tests, the safety officer still sat in the driver's seat to serve, and users could experience it for free.
By the end of last year, Radish Run began to officially charge. At the same time, this is also Baidu's second breakthrough. The core breakthrough after obtaining the permit now is that there is no longer a safety officer in the main driver's seat. And that's a truly unmanned phase.
Wei Dong also mentioned that the Yizhuang Management Committee will soon begin to study the management methods for all-unmanned autonomous driving. At present, the technology of the main driver to the main driver has achieved a breakthrough. As for the co-driver no one or the whole car unmanned, there is no technical threshold.
Since the Yizhuang Management Committee has begun to study the management method of all unmanned vehicles, Baidu has the opportunity to achieve full unmanned manned at the end of this year or early next year.
Conclusion: Baidu unmanned manned will be gradually commercialized
In the past few years, Baidu has not only been committed to building an open automatic driving software platform such as Apollo, but also built an autonomous driving travel service platform such as Radish Run, and gradually provided automatic driving paid services.
In this process, Baidu is also constantly breaking through the technical problems in automatic driving and successfully obtaining the unmanned license for autonomous driving. Baidu's autonomous vehicles have also smoothly transitioned from the main driver equipped with safety officers to the current co-drivers equipped with safety officers.
After that, Baidu will continue to expand its operating areas and increase its operating cities, while striving to reduce costs. In the process of realizing fully unmanned manned, Baidu will promote the commercialization of large-scale autonomous driving.