Text | Wei Qiyang
Source | Intelligent Relativity (aixdlun)
The smart bus that had been shouting for a long time finally made a breakthrough.
Following the opening of the smart bus line 315 for manned operation on April 30, the Changsha "Touyang Project" digital transportation vehicle-mounted intelligent terminal technology transformation project was officially launched recently, and more than 2,000 traditional buses will be intelligent within three months The transformation also means that the country's largest active bus priority system is about to land.
What we see is the significance of technology landing on the promotion of smart transportation, but as far as the project itself is concerned, it can still bring us thinking. The nation’s largest active public transport priority system has landed in Changsha. Did smart public transport choose Changsha or Changsha? How was the active bus priority system developed in Changsha? How does Xidi Smart Drive find just-needed applications for vehicle-road collaboration?
"Fast" and "Slow" of Changsha Smart Public Transport
In fact, as early as 5 years ago, when Changsha decided to enter the smart car industry, Hu Henghua, member of the Standing Committee of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee and Secretary of the Changsha Municipal Party Committee, proposed the idea of implementing smart public transport. However, at that time, the industrial conditions were not yet mature.
Until November 28, 2018, Changsha opened the country’s first smart bus demonstration line in an open road environment in the Xiangjiang New District of Hunan in accordance with the integrated coordination of vehicles, roads, and clouds. This 7.8-kilometer-long line has 11 lines along the route. The smart bus line 1 of the station has realized L3 level automatic driving. As of the end of 2019, the total test mileage of smart bus was 30,000 kilometers, and the trial operation was nearly 600 times.
Although this line is still in operation, it mainly carries the test task. The number of smart buses invested is only 4, respectively, 2 units produced by CRRC Electric based on L3 pre-installation and integrated production by Xidi Smart Bus There are still a few people who can truly experience smart public transport with the two installed and modified.
One year later, in November 2019, Xidi Zhijia released the V2X+ active bus priority technical solution on the basis of a large number of tests, and tested it on the smart bus line 2 with support from Changsha traffic police, bus companies, and Xiangjiang Intelligent Under this quasi-commercial line, Changsha has started the practice of exploring “vehicle-road coordination and active bus priority, green wave speed recommendations, and traffic light information sharing”.
It can be said that until the end of last year, the implementation of smart public transportation in Changsha was not very fast. The sudden increase in speed came from Hu Henghua's decision to investigate the smart car industry on April 18 and have a full understanding of the current state of technology development. He proposed that the development of the smart car industry should "highlight the connection of cars, roads, clouds, and the Internet, with the focus on making a fuss on the'road', focusing on vehicle-road coordination, promoting vehicles by road, and promoting the integrated development of intelligent network connection and intelligent transportation. And contribute to urban development as soon as possible."
Policy clears the way, technology first.
Just 12 days after Hu Henghua investigated the smart car industry in Changsha, the smart bus line 315 opened on April 30.
Compared with the previous smart bus demonstration line No. 2, the biggest difference between the opening of the smart bus line 315 is that it is upgraded from the original 315 bus line, which means that the bus is the original bus and the line is also the original line , Smart public transport can cover a wider range of people, and active public transport priority allows citizens to enjoy the convenience of priority travel.
The biggest practical significance of the upgraded intelligent networked bus is to achieve active bus signal priority, which has obvious advantages compared with traditional physical priority and passive priority methods.
The physical priority method is to set up dedicated bus lanes, such as BRT, which has the disadvantage of wasting road resources; the passive type is to install camera sensing or near field communication sensing devices such as RFID at traffic intersections to detect and give priority to bus vehicles at the intersection. The disadvantage is that the arrival time of the vehicle cannot be predicted in advance, the priority algorithm cannot be fully implemented, and the state of the vehicle such as passenger capacity and driving intention cannot be known. The equipment cost is calculated according to the lane line, and the intersection cost is higher.
The active bus priority system developed by Xidi Zhijia has low cost, high accuracy, and easy modification. Only one basic version of RSU can be installed at an intersection to detect vehicles with a radius of 500 meters, and the positioning accuracy can reach centimeter level.
With the support of vehicle-road coordination and intelligent assisted driving technology, this system allows buses or other vehicles to proactively send priority traffic requests to the “roadside”. Roadside equipment at traffic intersections can obtain real-time data such as the speed, position, and internal and external status of the intelligent networked bus, and perform real-time linkage with the traffic signal control system. When a vehicle approaches a smart intersection, the vehicle-road collaboration system will obtain accurate vehicle position, driving speed, number of passengers in the vehicle, on-time status and other data in real time, interact with the traffic signal control system, and adjust the signal lights in real time under the multi-dimensional parameter control mechanism The duration of each phase is configured to realize the priority of public transportation by shortening the red light and extending the green light.
Two months after the opening of the Smart Bus Line 315, the country's largest active bus priority system-Changsha "Touyang Plan" digital transportation vehicle intelligent terminal technology transformation project was launched, and more than 2,000 traditional buses were included in the list of transformation.
The technical core of the project is consistent with that of Smart Bus Line 315. It addresses the pain points of public transportation from a multi-faceted perspective of “people, vehicles, roads, and clouds”, and emphasizes the operational advantages of “fast, punctual, and crowded”. Not only can it improve the transportation capacity, route optimization, and peak-shift dispatching of the city’s public transportation, but also provide computing power and decision-making support for the optimization of costs and subsidies for the entire public transportation industry through the sinking of intelligent network technology. The landing of other scenes provides a good example.
After five years of grinding a sword, why can Changsha give birth to this technology and the start-up company Xidi Smart Driving?
From the idea to the final realization, Changsha took 5 years; from the opening of Smart Bus Line 315 to the launch of the "Touyang Plan" digital transportation vehicle-mounted smart terminal technology transformation project, to achieve a breakthrough in smart public transport from volume to qualitative change, of which only 2 months.
It has to be said that between the fast and the slow, Changsha’s "fast" confidence is the result of five years of accumulation, especially the L3 smart bus demonstration line has provided important experience support for the polishing of the active bus priority system and the verification plan. In the words of Xidi Zhijia CEO Ma Wei, it has formed a technical "dimensionality reduction blow."
The innovation of active bus priority is to break through the dynamic range of traffic signal control. Although the traffic signal is still under the control of the traffic police, smart public transportation requires more precise and real-time control by the traffic police, as well as the close cooperation of the bus company.
Traffic lights are a highly sensitive and extremely safe urban operation hub. If the signal lights are controlled incorrectly, traffic will be blocked in the slightest, and accidents will be caused. A typical scene: pedestrians are crossing the road and suddenly change the phase of the traffic lights to cause an accident How to do?
Xidi Zhijia V2X+ solution solves this problem from three aspects.
First, using beyond-the-horizon perception, the roadside equipment RSU connected to the traffic light predicts the arrival time of the priority request vehicle in advance, even if it is an invisible vehicle a few hundred meters away, and can accurately sense the lane line position and driving intention of the vehicle. The control of traffic lights can be planned in advance to avoid sudden changes;
Second, control the "degree", that is, grasp the degree of priority. The change of the traffic light is within a certain range, not too long or too short.
Third, the smart bus is equipped with safety assistance functions such as fatigue driving detection, lane keeping, obstacle avoidance alarm, and panoramic view.
On the basis of the above, the relevant departments of the Changsha Municipal Government have repeatedly verified the risks of technology implementation. After careful research, the project boldly promoted, especially during the sprint of the large-scale implementation of the active bus priority system. Hunan Xiangjiang New District, Changsha City Traffic Police, The coordination and cooperation among the government and enterprises such as the Transportation Bureau, the bus company, and Xiangjiang Intelligent shows that Changsha is responsible for embracing changes.
Going back to the starting point of the problem, how does Xidi Zhijia turn the tall autonomous driving technology into a down-to-earth product to solve the pain points in our lives?
1. Basic capabilities built by autonomous driving and vehicle-road collaboration technology
Smart public transport is a comprehensive project that requires leading companies to “cross-border” collaboration in the two areas of autonomous driving and vehicle-road collaboration. In addition, as a manned normal operation project, it will not only solve the actual pain points of traditional public transport, but also To ensure that the technical solution is safe and reliable without a business trip pool, this puts forward certain requirements on the basic capabilities of the project leader.
Xidi Zhijiao is positioned as an autonomous driving research and development company, and has accumulated a set of operation modes to form products in its field of expertise.
The approach of Xidi Zhijia is to quickly adapt to the large computing power computing equipment, lidar and other incremental accessories on autonomous vehicles, and embed its own algorithm results in these hardware to form software-defined functions and upgrade capabilities .
Xidi Smart Drive has a unique process especially in deep embedded software development and rapid migration, such as in a variety of hardware platforms, such as Nvidia series Xevier, NX, TX2, Nano and Huawei MDC, HiSilicon, NXP, Infineon , Freescale and others have landing cases, which can ensure that the most economical hardware products and deep embedded integration are adopted according to software functions.
For another example, for different models and scenarios such as sanitation operations and mine transportation, Xidi Smart Drive not only owns mature technology, but also develops various autonomous driving kits for this ability, so that users can quickly develop to meet their own needs. Autonomous driving products for individual needs.
In the process of product landing, the technical capabilities of Xidi Zhijia have been repeatedly tested and verified in the market competition, thus obtaining industry recognition.
Although the main business of Xidi Zhijia is the research and development of self-driving heavy trucks and operating vehicles, since its establishment, it has insisted that the last 1% of self-driving blind spots depends on the roadside equipment RSU to support the technical route, so it is in vehicle-road coordination. Also invested a lot of resources.
The road-to-vehicle collaboration products developed by Xidi Zhijia support 5G, LTE-V, DSRC and other multi-mode communications. There are also basic versions and holographic sensing versions for roadside devices. At the same time, it vigorously promotes algorithm innovation and application, targeting cross road conditions, smart high-speed, More than 100 solutions have been released in scenarios such as urban traffic situation awareness.
The V2X+ active bus priority scheme adopted by the Changsha Smart Bus Project includes customized on-board network equipment OBU and deep learning large computing power processing unit IPU, supporting more than 20 software-defined priority and assisted driving functions.
There are core technologies in autonomous driving, and unique understanding in vehicle-road coordination. The smart public transportation solution that is developed in this way can form a full-stack closed-loop global thinking, and it can reduce detours during implementation.
2. Landing capabilities built by user thinking and market competition
It is not easy for technology to become a product, but more difficult is how to get through the link from the product to the application of the product. It is necessary to consider not only the ability to solve practical problems, but also the controllable cost and sufficient market competitiveness. Back The Changsha Smart Public Transport Project requires equipment providers to have rich practical experience in transforming technology into commercial landing.
From the perspective of users, smart buses are facing multiple and even contradictory needs, including different needs of passengers, bus companies, drivers, regulatory agencies, and traffic control departments. Many needs must be balanced and considered to be safe and efficient. And economics, Xidi Zhijia has done more than one year of user pain point research and in-depth analysis for this.
According to Ma Wei, CEO of Xidi Zhijia, Xidi Zhijia is engaged in intelligent driving heavy trucks. Both unmanned mines and closed park unmanned heavy trucks have project implementation, and they have accumulated a lot of experience in product implementation and large-scale project implementation and process installation.
In terms of vehicle-road coordination, Xidi Smart Drive has gained more. Together with its partners, it has signed dozens of contracts in Beijing, Wuxi, Changchun, Wuhan and other cities, and projects have been implemented all over the country.
Unlike many autopilot companies that only make inputs and outputs difficult to produce, Xidi Zhijia has already gained considerable market awareness and rich experience in the past three years since its establishment, and this also constitutes Xidi Zhijia to a certain extent. Multiple moats.
3. Ecological gathering capabilities built by partners and open thinking
Whether smart driving or smart transportation, you can’t go it alone, you must draw on the strengths of others to form an ecological synergy. Xidi smart driving quickly emerges around its own technical layout and landing projects, which is the same as the smart driving created by Changsha and Xiangjiang New District. The ecology of the city is inseparable.
According to the information disclosed by Xidi Zhijia, the partners of Xidi Zhijia include mainstream automakers such as Foton Daimler and Liuzhou Automobile; also Xiangjiang Intelligent, Xiangjiang New District, Changsha Traffic Police, Transportation Bureau, Public Transport Company, Hunan Transportation Research institutes, Hunan Transportation Design Institute and other government functional departments and platform companies. In addition, there are chip companies (Huawei, NVIDIA), sensor companies (DJI) and heavy truck logistics companies that are closely related to autonomous driving, which open up a complete industry chain.
In this way, it is easy to understand that Xidi Zhijia can provide complete smart transportation and smart bus solutions based on its own practical experience. During the implementation of the plan, Xidi Zhijia has strong ecological partners to support the plan. Every detail of the can use the highest technology in this field, so that the program is always within the operable range.
What does the implementation of the active bus priority system mean to Xidi Smart Driving?
The implementation of the active bus priority system is the beginning of the full popularization of smart buses from 0 to 1 for Changsha, and for Xidi Smart Driving, it is the starting point for a higher level.
First of all, smart public transport embodies the value of technology, allowing ordinary people to enjoy the benefits of technology.
In the past, self-driving cars were high, but they were kept in the laboratory or on the test field. What we left was the fantasy of a beautiful blueprint. Autonomous driving companies needed to lay eggs along the way in the process of "climbing Mount Everest." In other words, it is also necessary to feel the changes in life and the value of technology through the implementation of new technologies.
Secondly, smart public transport embodies the value of the enterprise, returns investors and gives confidence to industry peers.
Imagine that there is such a large market demand in Changsha alone. Looking across the country, the field of smart transportation that has just started is full of huge imagination. An investor believes that Xidi Smart Drive’s active bus priority technology may create a tens of billions of incremental market.
Finally, the smart public transport project has set an industry benchmark. Changsha ran ahead and became a city model for smart public transportation. As the technology and product provider of the project, the active public transportation priority system developed by Xidi Smart Driving will also become the object of peer learning and research.
In an emerging market that is just getting started, starting early means gaining a first-mover advantage. This is critical in the era of artificial intelligence. It is like a master's tricks, leading with one move and leading everywhere.
In this way, Xidi Zhijia’s winning of the Changsha Smart Public Transport Project is not the end. The goal is to replicate the prototype technology and keep iterative advantages in order to emerge in the national market.
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