Autonomous driving is still too far away? These scenarios will be applied first

Unmanned driving is the direction of future development of the automobile industry. Unmanned driving is not equal to automatic driving. Automatic driving is divided into five levels from L1 to L5 according to the degree of human participation. Unmanned driving specifically refers to automatic driving without human participation, that is, automatic driving in the full sense.

The difficulty of realizing autonomous driving is very high. Autonomous driving involves a series of industrial chains such as artificial intelligence, sensors, and high-precision maps. The industry generally believes that autonomous driving in general scenarios is difficult to achieve in the short term. But this does not mean that autonomous driving is still very far away from us. The difficulty of realizing autonomous driving in different scenarios is different. For some scenarios with relatively simple traffic environments, autonomous driving may be commercialized in the short term.

For example, in the logistics industry. The core of the logistics industry lies in safety and cost. Using unmanned logistics vehicles to replace drivers has become the key to the development of the logistics industry. In the freight scene, the traffic scene is relatively simple, and the vehicle behavior is more regular under many rules. From this perspective, unmanned freight in high-speed scenes will be implemented earlier than autonomous driving in urban areas.

Ports are an important scenario for unmanned driving applications. Ports such as Qingdao, Xiamen, and Tianjin have already started unmanned and automated applications, and automated bridge cranes, rail cranes and other equipment have been put into use. The realization of unmanned driving of port transport vehicles will further improve the degree of automation in ports.

At present, there are two main solutions for horizontal transportation of automated container terminals. One is to use an automatic guided vehicle and buried magnetic nails on the ground. This solution needs to be customized and is very expensive. The other is an unmanned electric truck solution. Relying on unmanned driving technology, the truck can directly deliver the container to the designated location, reducing transportation links and reducing costs.

Mining is a harsh and closed working environment with fixed work routes, repetitive work content and high risk. Therefore, there are few drivers willing to work in this industry. This provides an opportunity for the application of autonomous driving in mines.

However, there are still some technical problems to be solved. There are many obstacles around the mining area, sensors are difficult to work properly, and GPS signals are weak, which are unfavorable conditions for unmanned driving applications. At the same time, the excavator and mining truck need to cooperate well, and the cooperation of different vehicles is critical. At present, the mechanized unmanned technology in the mining field has made great breakthroughs.

In addition, unmanned driving is also expected to be applied in park and shared car scenarios. The park routes are relatively fixed, but there are many people. It is necessary to combine the construction and planning of the park to reasonably design the automatic driving routes of sightseeing buses and shuttle buses. The most urgent application of automatic driving for shared cars is automatic parking and automatic passenger pick-up. Although it is still difficult to achieve full automatic driving in the urban area, the realization of automatic parking and passenger pick-up will greatly reduce the labor cost of shared car operations.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.