[? YEEO Introduction?] ? Within three years, the pilot range of limited-scenario autonomous driving will be expanded on a large scale.
Author 丨 Zhang Nan
Editor 丨 Yang Yaru
Under the epidemic, the concept of "unmanned" accidentally ushered in the first light of 2020.
In the days when people were forced to stay at home, a short video of an unmanned vehicle helping out with the epidemic went viral, with the image of an unmanned vehicle bearing the logo of the company. "
Beijing East Logistics' unmanned distribution car in Wuhan Qingshan District, Jilin Street, "come and go as you please", through the construction of the intersection of the second road, and ultimately the material will be successfully transported to the Wuhan Ninth Hospital.
Beyond Jingdong, Gao Xinxing, Harness Technology, Smart Walker, New Stone and many other companies have also participated in this power race - the whole nation "anti-epidemic" background, belonging to their unmanned vehicles are in Wuhan and even the country's major cities and hospitals, to provide local residents with disinfection, delivery of food, and other services. They are providing local residents with services such as disinfection, food delivery, logistics and temperature measurement. This also marks the first time that unmanned disinfection vehicles, unmanned cleaning vehicles, unmanned distribution vehicles and other models have really come into the lives of ordinary people.
Many netizens have commented that technology has changed their lives. However, the reason why the unmanned vehicles that have been "fired" for a long time are able to provide services at key nodes is largely due to the fact that the above vehicles belong to the limited scene of the self-driving car, the speed is lower, and the surrounding environment is simpler.
The so-called limited scene is a specific area with geographical constraints. At present, for the epidemic area to provide services to unmanned vehicles work scene are hospitals, neighborhoods and other closed/semi-closed areas, the frequency of abnormal situations is less. As for some public **** road part of the application, but also due to the epidemic period vehicles and pedestrians sparse, theoretically close to the park semi-closed scene. Another fact is that unmanned vehicles traveling on public **** roads, such as Jingdong logistics carts, will not have a long delivery distance (hundreds of meters). All of these factors add up to give the unmanned car "big show" a good opportunity.
On the other hand, the timely application of self-driving cars in the context of the epidemic also highlights the rapid development of this technology and the possibility of landing. Today, ports, parks, airports, mines, parking lots and other limited scenarios of self-driving technology is gradually maturing, in the pilot operation and commercialization of the intermediate stage. Its initial pilot operation can be traced back to two years ago.
Standing at the node of 2020 and looking backward, YEEO Automotive believes that automatic driving in limited scenarios may enter a new development stage in three years.
New development opportunities
According to the past impression, most people think that automatic driving is the exclusive term belonging to passenger cars: tap on the cell phone APP, the unmanned car comes in a moment and carries the passengers to the destination automatically. This is not only the understanding of most people's minds for the self-driving car, but also the future vision of the capital market on RoboTaxi to increase the layout.
But when the capital market environment tends to be severe, RoboTaxi's own development bottlenecks are also gradually revealed - the technical realization of the difficulty, the delay is difficult to scale the landing, the real profit needs to go through a long period of time, and its popularity naturally reduced. According to the observation of Euromobile, in the past year, the financing events and financing amount of RoboTaxi field is generally reduced, on the contrary, many companies in the field of automatic driving in the limited scenario have completed a new round of financing in the last year, including Huituo, Tapgee Zhixing, Xidi Zhi driving, easy to control Zhi driving, etc. Focus on mining scenarios of the enterprise, and the main line of science and technology, the new stone, such as the application of the enterprise in the port and the park.
Capital's attitude reflects the industry's market prospects and companies' commercialization hopes. "Autopilot needs to be realized in combination with scenario applications." Wito CEO Chen Long has told Yio Auto. Chen Chaozhuo, vice president of Zongmu Technology, also said in 2017 in the Beijing Telematics and Intelligent Driving Forum that the maturity of automatic driving should be analyzed from the two dimensions of automatic driving grading and geographic fencing (Geofence). In his opinion, automatic driving technology in scenes with no/few people and low speed can mature earlier. This is the distinguishing feature of limited-scenario autonomous driving.
Compared with open road scenarios, limited scenarios have fewer types of vehicles and pedestrians, which reduces the dependence on sensing equipment such as LIDAR, and the overall cost of the self-driving solution decreases. At the same time, because the self-driving vehicle is traveling slower in the limited scenario, its decision-making pressure becomes smaller. If a problem arises during the driving process, the vehicle can also pull over in time, enhancing driving safety.
In addition, due to the geographically constrained nature of the limited scenarios, the range of abnormalities encountered by autonomous vehicles is relatively controllable, and there are fewer extreme cases, which reduces the difficulty of technology development. Therefore, compared to the more open road scenarios, the self-driving technology will mature faster in the limited scenarios, and will be the first to usher in commercialization.
At present, companies such as Mainline Technology, Treadmill Intelligence, Huituo, Smart Driver, Harness Technology, and New Stone have all realized pilot operations in scenarios such as mines, ports, airports, and parks. Through exchanges with industry insiders, YEEO Auto believes that the pilot scope of the scene will be scaled up in the next three years, and commercial operation will be realized in about five years.
Standing in the future, three changes
With the limited-scenario automated driving gradually from the pilot to commercial operation, the relevant enterprises will also change accordingly. YOUTH AUTOMOBILE through exchanges with a number of industry sources learned that the current limited-scene automatic driving in the commercialization of the eve, the future focus of competition between the relevant enterprises will be shifted from the technology to the operation.
First of all, the cost of parts and components of the automatic driving industry will be further reduced, and the supply chain will be further mature. 2020 at the beginning of the CES, the automatic driving LIDAR can be said to be "blossomed", and has become a major attraction of the exhibition. Sutton Polytron, Radium God Intelligent Energy, DJI, Wo Sai Technology and other companies have to show their latest products. At present, there are already a number of companies' products in the stability of performance at the same time the price down to about one thousand dollars. In order to maintain accuracy and safety, the limited scenarios of autonomous driving still need the assistance of LiDAR, and the low cost and high performance of this unmanned vehicle essential kit, will complement the commercialization of autonomous driving.?
Laser radar outside, the appropriate wire control chassis is also the realization of the basic kit of automatic driving. With the development of technology, the role of the automatic driving line control chassis as an independent supplier began to become clear around 2018. Under limited-scenario autonomous driving, low-speed electric vehicle companies and passenger car companies are trying to enter this market. At the same time, certain robotics companies are also making corresponding attempts.
Secondly, in the evolution to large-scale pilot applications, the vehicles for limited-scenario autonomous driving will be closer to the product state -- stable enough performance, relatively low cost, strong scene replication ability, and good integration with the operation platform. These four points are also considered by the industry as key factors for the landing of autonomous driving. Automated driving solution providers will shift from focusing on technology development to being more concerned about the operational and service capabilities of the company.
"Don't expect automatic driving technology to solve all the problems, some problems that technology can't solve can be solved by operation." White Rhino CTO Tim Xia has told Yio Auto. Compared with open road scenarios, self-driving cars encounter relatively few extreme cases (corner?case) in limited scenarios, and the actual road test and trial operation process, the machine is able to collect problems in a timely manner, and learn the solution in the shortest possible time, and so on and so forth, and its ability to cope with abnormal situations can grow.
To increase safety, most self-driving companies focusing on limited scenarios have equipped their vehicles with remote takeover systems. While occupations such as delivery workers and logistics drivers disappear, new types of positions such as self-driving remote takeover operators, self-driving operations and maintenance workers, and self-driving platform administrators will emerge.?
At the same time, the competitive dynamics of scene-limited autonomous driving companies will shift from technological competition to operational competition, in order to maximize the fit for user needs.
Edited by Yang Yaru
This article comes from the authors of Automotive Home, and does not represent the viewpoint position of Automotive Home.