Alibaba's autonomous driving route begins to take shape: Wang Gang leads the team, L4 takes the lead

The rumors began to be verified more and more.

Three months ago, Xin Zhijia reported on Alibaba's autonomous driving team. At that time, Xin Zhijia learned that Alibaba's artificial intelligence laboratory (AI labs) was conducting research and development of autonomous driving technology. As of November 2017, the team involved in the research and development had about 10 people, who planned to complete the demo test by the end of 2017 and expand the team size to about 50 people in early 2018.

Today (April 16), Caixin quoted an insider from Alibaba, which once again confirmed Alibaba's ambition in the field of autonomous driving. Its route is mainly based on L4 fully autonomous driving technology. At present, the Lincoln MKZ modified by the team has been routinely tested on the road and has initially acquired the ability to test on open roads. There are still dozens of vehicles under development. Subsequently, many media outlets verified with Alibaba, which once again confirmed the rumor.

In addition, another important information verified this time is that the leader of the team is indeed Wang Gang, chief scientist of AI labs, as mentioned before.

Wang Gang joined Alibaba as a distinguished scientist in March 2017. He is a tenured professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, an editorial board member of IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, a top artificial intelligence journal, and was selected into the 2017 MIT Technology Review Global Young Science and Technology Innovator List (TR35).

Wang Gang is good at deep learning. He is mainly responsible for the research of machine learning, computer vision and natural language understanding in AI labs. In July last year, Alibaba released the smart speaker Tmall Genie X1, which applied many of his research results. When he was in Singapore, Wang Gang developed an assisted driving system for vehicle, distance and lane detection, and successfully commercialized it.

At the same time, the machine vision team led by Ren Xiaofeng, chief scientist of iDST (Institute of Data Science and Technology), is also advancing related technologies. In January this year, Alibaba won three road scene segmentation tasks in KITTI, the world's largest autonomous driving computer vision algorithm set, including two specific scene evaluation tasks, UMM_ROAD (multi-lane) and UU_ROAD (rural lane), and the overall scene comprehensive evaluation task URBAN_ROAD.

Cainiao's autonomous driving logistics delivery

Compared with passenger cars, self-driving logistics vehicles came earlier and faster for Alibaba, which is based on e-commerce.

At the end of 2015, Alibaba's Cainiao Network established the Cainiao ET Logistics Laboratory, which mainly conducts research and development of drones, terminal delivery robots, and complex warehouse picking robots. At the end of 2016, the ET Logistics Laboratory officially launched an autonomous logistics vehicle. So far, it has developed three terminal delivery robots: Cainiao XiaoG, Cainiao XiaoG 2nd Generation, and Cainiao XiaoG Plus. Recently, road test videos of Cainiao's unmanned logistics vehicles with the words "Cainiao ET Logistics Laboratory" printed on the body have also begun to appear frequently on the Internet.

In late March, at a technical forum in Shenzhen, Cainiao senior algorithm expert Chen Junbo revealed that its self-driving logistics delivery vehicle is likely to be mass-produced by the end of this year. Currently, the vehicle is being tested on a 10-kilometer section of road between Alibaba's Xixi Park and Cainiao's first Xixi campus. The latest G Plus can already deliver internal documents and express deliveries between the two locations.

Cainiao's self-driving logistics delivery vehicles use a fusion solution of lidar, GPS, and vision. If Alibaba's passenger cars choose the L4 technology route, its solution will most likely also cover multiple sensor technologies such as lidar, millimeter-wave radar, and cameras.

In addition, Chen Junbo also said that in addition to the small logistics vehicles at the end, the team will also carry out relevant technical development in the field of autonomous driving trucks. Therefore, from passenger cars, small logistics vehicles to trucks, Alibaba's autonomous driving planning has covered several of the most important foreseeable scenarios.

Layout of the entire automotive industry chain

He Xiaopeng, who was once the president of Alibaba's mobile business group, left Alibaba in August last year and officially became the chairman of Xiaopeng Motors and began to build cars in a high-profile manner. Alibaba naturally became an important capital force behind this new car company. In addition to participating in the earliest investment with He Xiaopeng, in January this year, Xiaopeng Motors launched a 2.2 billion yuan Series B financing, and Alibaba remained an important participant.

In addition, another major move by Alibaba in the travel sector is its cooperation with SAIC.

In 2015, Alibaba and SAIC jointly established Banma Smart, a car networking company; in July 2016, the two companies jointly launched the Roewe RX5, which was claimed to be the "first Internet car". The following year, the Roewe RX3 was launched. The Banma Smart car system based on the AliOS operating system not only collected user data through these two cars, but was also successfully installed on MG, Maxus and other brand models. At present, the installation volume of the entire Banma Smart system has exceeded 530,000, and its cooperation with Dongfeng Citroen and Ford is also in place.

From vehicle manufacturing to the full industry layout of autonomous driving for passenger cars, logistics delivery vehicles, and trucks, to software and hardware support in various fields such as AutoNavi Maps, Qianxun Location, and Banma Smart Driving, Alibaba's product matrix is ​​becoming increasingly complete and perfect in this industry competition that emphasizes capital and talent. Although it lags behind Baidu and Tencent at the start, for a company with a market value of more than 400 billion US dollars, it is no small matter to overtake others with a huge investment.

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.