This is the Hebei section of the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway, and a smart car equipped with high-precision positioning capabilities is driving on the highway. When the speed reaches 120 km/h, the driver taps the screen in the car to activate the driver assistance system, and gradually releases the steering wheel with both hands. At this time, the vehicle is officially taken over by the assisted driving system, and along the preset route, the vehicle automatically completes the operation of changing lanes, overtaking, and switching ramps on the highway. Half an hour later, the vehicle arrived safely at the Baoding South Exit.
This smart car that can be driven "with both hands" is one of the 1 million high-precision positioning solutions for vehicles equipped with Qianxun's FindAUTO Beidou space-time vehicle. By providing car companies with a complete set of systematic solutions from chips, positioning modules, algorithms to services, Qianxun has realized the landing of the high-precision positioning system "on the car" from 1 to 1 million.
(Experience the "double-hands" intelligent driving on the expressway)
Services, algorithms, and hardware continue to evolve to provide systematic solutions
2023 is a year of rapid commercialization of smart cars. With the implementation of L2 assisted driving and the acceleration of L3 access and on-road pilots, satellite high-precision positioning terminals, as the only sensors on the vehicle that can provide absolute position and accurate time, have become a rigid demand for autonomous driving.
For L3 and above intelligent driving, the accuracy of high-precision positioning is no longer the only measurement index. Safety, reliability, and accuracy are just as important, and there can be no shortcomings like a wooden barrel.
As early as 2021, Qianxun Location pioneered the "Automotive High-precision Positioning Industrialization System", and took the lead in the industry to clarify the program content, product performance, service process and standards of automotive high-precision positioning industrialization. Benefiting from the experience accumulated in large-scale mass production in the past three years, this system has continuously evolved and improved at the service, algorithm and hardware levels, and has formed a set of systematic "turnkey" solutions covering the whole life cycle of high-precision positioning "onboarding".
In terms of service, Qianxun released the "Star-Earth Communication" capability last year. This capability integrates the advantages of ground-based services and satellite-based services, and seamlessly switches, so that smart cars can use 24×7 high-precision, high-reliability, real-time and seamless Beidou space-time intelligent services in urban areas and remote areas without networks. In addition, it provides "integrity" safety indicators with a risk as low as 10-7/hour, and makes real-time judgments on satellite positioning results to ensure driving safety.
In terms of algorithm, Qianxun Location adopts a deep coupling algorithm that is more challenging for R&D capabilities but has better positioning effect in urban canyons. It effectively improves the accuracy and reliability of high-precision positioning in complex scenarios such as mountain roads and high-speed toll stations, and protects navigation equipment from deceptive signal interference. At the same time, in the face of the technical problem of the ionosphere, Qianxun has developed its own ionospheric suppression capability, which can "predict the ionosphere like a weather forecast" and reduce the impact of ionospheric activity on intelligent driving in low latitudes.
（千寻位置自研车规级P-box）
In terms of hardware, Qianxun encapsulates self-developed algorithms and services into self-developed GNSS chip modules and P-boxes, which helps to accelerate the integration of software and hardware when car companies use high-precision positioning. In the future, satellite communication capabilities such as Beidou short messages will also be integrated into the intelligent driving system, and when the vehicle drives to a place with poor communication network, it can report location information for emergency help.
At present, Qianxun is the first high-precision positioning service provider in China to provide a turnkey solution for the whole life cycle from development, mass production and after-sales to the pre-installation fixed-point project. Through the self-developed spatio-temporal intelligent chip, the self-developed P-Box of the vehicle-grade positioning module, and the self-developed deep coupling algorithm, Qianxun has formed a self-developed closed loop for high-level intelligent driving, and its technical capabilities have also been recognized by many leading car companies.
Qianxun's position spans BMW's two generations of technical solutions (source: Gasgoo)
Wu Huixiao, vice president of Great Wall Motors Intelligence, once said, "The Beidou space-time intelligent service provided by Qianxun will make us feel more at ease in terms of stability and reliability, as well as safety and redundancy." BMW has also recently been exposed by the media that the L3 intelligent driving solution is cooperating with Qianxun Location, spanning its two generations of technical solutions.
The 136 delivery system is fully adapted to the rapid launch of new vehicles
As the race for autonomous driving enters the second half, the speed of mass production and standardized delivery of new vehicles are key.
Typically, the development cycle for a car is 48 months. Nowadays, with the intensification of competition, the cycle from project approval to launch of a large number of models has been shortened to 18 months, and even as short as 12 months. The significant acceleration of new car launches means that a complete, mature and standardized supply chain system must be matched behind it to ensure the driving safety and reliability of automobiles.
At present, Qianxun location can help automakers complete the evaluation within 1 month at the earliest, complete the adaptation within 3 months, and achieve mass production within 6 months.
In the past, due to the different software and hardware standards of different automobile manufacturers, nearly seventy or eighty percent of smart cars needed to do customized services. Manufacturers have to face multiple choices from device selection, system integration to testing and verification, and once a problem is found, it is difficult to troubleshoot.
In April last year, Qianxun took the lead in the industry to open up the whole link of space-time intelligence, further improved the 136 delivery system, and greatly improved the mass production speed of high-precision positioning "on the car". "After opening up the whole link, Qianxun will inject spatio-temporal intelligence into self-developed services, algorithms and chip modules, which greatly reduces the customization work, greatly reduces costs, accelerates delivery speed, and forms a large-scale effect. Chen Jinpei, CEO of Qianxun location, said.
With the help of the 136 delivery system, Qianxun has effectively improved the "onboarding" speed of high-precision services, helping car companies achieve high-precision and high-reliability indicators for intelligent driving. In order to match the rhythm of mass production of automobiles, Qianxun also provides customers with 7*24 small operation and maintenance support services to ensure the response speed and ensure that the service availability rate reaches 99.99%.
According to the monitoring data of the Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute, from January to September 2023, the number of high-precision positioning systems for new cars in China will be 597,100, a year-on-year increase of 153.56%, and the penetration rate will increase from 1.91% in 2022 to 4.03%, which is between the small-scale introduction period and large-scale volume (bounded by 10% penetration).
Behind the 1 million smart cars on the road, Qianxun has been deeply cultivating in the field of intelligent driving for many years, and on the basis of years of mass production experience, it has explored the high standards of product design, delivery system, and operation and maintenance system, and formed a set of best practices recognized by the industry.
At present, Qianxun is the only mature and mass-produced high-precision positioning service provider in China, with a cumulative service time of more than 1.5 billion hours. The FindAUTO high-precision positioning solution has been delivered in batches on more than 30 models, and has been designated by more than 100 models, covering many mainstream domestic automobile brands, including SAIC, Geely, Xpeng, Ideal, Gaohe, Zhiji, Leap, FAW Hongqi, GAC Aion, etc.