Similarly, on October 17, baidu and Jinlong Bus signed a strategic cooperation agreement, promising to put a low-volume self-driving microcycle car into trial operation in July next year.
Driverless cars have been an enduring topic in various industries in recent years, and Internet technology giants have long been eyeing up the huge cake. Coupled with the increase of car ownership, as well as the continuous improvement and improvement of the performance of traditional cars, people are becoming more and more dependent on cars. But at the same time, the problems exposed in the development of traditional cars are also constantly promoting the emergence of driverless cars.
The rapid rise of driverless cars is driven by many factors
In recent years, the development of driverless cars has been in full swing, whether in China, the United States or Europe, there is a suitable soil for it to grow. Under the catalysis of various factors such as safety, transportation, environment and capital intervention, driverless cars have achieved rapid development by leaps and leaps, which is the result of the joint action of society, science and technology and Internet.
First, the safety problems of traditional cars promote the development of unmanned cars. According to the statistical Bulletin of 2016 National Economic and Social Development, the number of civilian cars nationwide reached 194.4 million by the end of last year, up 12.8 percent from the previous year, and the number of private cars reached 165.59 million, up 15 percent. In 2016, 40,824 people were killed in road traffic accidents in China, up 12.84 percent from 36,178 in 2015. Road accidents kill up to one million people around the world every year, a BBC documentary shows.
The safety of cars has been criticized, and people are increasingly worried about the safety of driving cars. Although major automobile manufacturers are seeking technological breakthroughs, and governments of all countries have been actively appealing to people to obey traffic rules, the artificial driving of traditional cars has determined that the safety of cars cannot be completely avoided. It can be said that it is the repeated driving accidents of traditional cars that force the emergence of unmanned driving, and these safety problems are constantly raising the requirements of the whole society for unmanned driving “intelligent brain”.
Secondly, traffic pressure, environmental pollution and other problems force people to change the way they travel. With the progress of The Times, not only the safety of traditional cars, but also traffic congestion and environmental pollution are increasingly urgent. According to statistics, the economic loss caused by traffic congestion in China is as high as 250 billion yuan every year, and the pollutants emitted by motor vehicles in 2016 exceeded 44 million tons. In the era of advocating energy conservation and emission reduction, driverless cars are more as a leading role.
Third, the involvement of tech giants has accelerated the development of driverless cars. Since the concept of driverless cars came out, the attention of all circles has never stopped, and the progress and intensity of research and development are constantly accelerating. Major car companies, technology companies, Internet companies and other companies have started to make arrangements, putting the target of self-driving cars on the market on the agenda.
According to cb Insights, more and more companies have been involved in the development of self-driving cars in recent years. According to the report, the number of companies developing driverless vehicles has risen to 44 from 25 in 2015, and many startups are not counted. Self-driving cars developed by Internet companies are mainly represented by Google of the United States and Baidu of China, while self-driving car manufacturers can take Tesla as the main source to see the new trend of self-driving.
Giants such as Google, Tesla and Baidu are trying to develop their own self-driving cars, thus taking up half of the market. Big companies see the huge market potential of driverless cars, and are trying to cash in on driverless cars as a trump card in their hands.
Google is building a fully intelligent driverless car
Google, the world’s most powerful Internet company, already has its own brand and products in the field of self-driving cars. In 2009, Google modified seven conventional cars and put them on the road for testing, marking the beginning of Google’s new journey of driverless car development. In 2012, Google showed off its self-driving car, and in May of the same year, the State of Nevada issued a legal license for Google’s self-driving car, marking a step forward in its testing.
In 2014, Google’s driverless cars used software that can monitor all targets on the road, including pedestrians and cars, to ensure the safety and reliability of the car. At that time, Google developed a truly self-driving car “Firefly,” which removed the steering wheel, brake, throttle and other traditional auto parts, and realized one-click self-driving.
Supported by a large amount of search data and abundant financial support, Google has become a leader in the self-driving car industry in just a few years from the launch of the self-driving car project, to the testing of vehicles on the road, and to the development of its own products. Although progress has been slowed by several changes of management, Google has taken the market.
Google has advantages over other companies in autonomous driving, but it also has limitations. First of all, from the test model’s equipment, laser radar, sensors, efficient processors and other expensive equipment, resulting in high cost, mass production is difficult; Second, Google itself is an Internet company with a large amount of reliable data for reference, but it relies heavily on other partners for hardware research and development and requirements. Google has to be controlled by others in the hardware manufacturing of unmanned cars. Finally, Google’s self-driving car has removed the traditional steering wheel, brake and accelerator, and completely relies on computers to operate and drive. Its safety performance has yet to be tested in practice.
Baidu open platform, group research and development of driverless cars
At baidu’s AI developer conference on July 5, 2017, Robin Li rode in a self-driving car in a video to show the self-driving car technology baidu has developed in recent years. Baidu, the country’s leading search engine, has taken an early lead in the country’s self-driving car sector.
In 2014, Baidu launched its self-driving car research and development program, and in 2015, it established its self-driving car business division. In December of the same year, Baidu’s self-driving car realized fully automatic driving in China. Last year, Baidu’s self-driving car was granted a road test license by the U.S. State of California. After Baidu announced the free Apollo platform in April this year, more than 70 well-known enterprises have participated in baidu’s unmanned driving research and development…
Driverless cars, in fact, research and development is a systematic project, the money and energy giant, single is difficult to complete on its own, therefore, baidu will ably to position itself as the underlying technology service providers, “make friends” partners, the move will undoubtedly accelerate the baidu self-driving car research and development process, also indirectly to speed up the industrialization of the smart car.
In recent years, Baidu has been trying to get rid of the influence of Tieba and medical incidents. With the change of senior personnel, Baidu has adjusted its strategic direction in the fastest time, bringing artificial intelligence driverless cars into the main channel of Baidu’s development. Having cut off a lot of “white elephants”, Baidu actually hopes to reshuffle its brand through driverless cars and save its reputation. If Google of the US and Baidu of China are the standard-bearers of driverless car development, Tesla is the new standard-bearer.
Tesla has turned driverless technology into a screen to protect humanity
Unlike Google and Baidu, Tesla Motors is more directly involved in automobile manufacturing, production, and research and development. Tesla takes self-driving technology developed by itself as an auxiliary tool to help people achieve driving. In the final analysis, Google and Baidu start with data and rely more on data and computers for operation, while Tesla can reach core products faster.
Founded in Silicon Valley in 2003, Tesla has become an industry giant after just a dozen years of development. In 2014, tesla entered the field of driverless cars. Its self-developed Autopilot2.0 system has been released and, like Google, has been granted a license to drive in California. Tesla’s advantage in developing a driverless car is that it has more data on the actual miles of driverless testing; In addition, under the banner of pure electric, Tesla has won the favor of the market with environmental protection and energy saving features. Pure electric + unmanned driving itself is a good selling point.
From the point of view of research and development, pre-production tesla’s goals and Google is consistent, namely the completely automatic driving, but in the test of 2016 car accident that killed the driver of the tesla from these mistakes and tesla began to convert ideas, grasp the unmanned can’t depend entirely on the computer, and should serve as a technique for auxiliary, help mankind to drive safely. Tesla has not slowed its own development because of the accident.
For Tesla, the most fatal defect is that it is still a novice car maker. After all, with only a few years of development, Tesla has suffered more than other car companies in terms of performance requirements in the research and development of high-end products. At the same time, consumers still have great doubts about the endurance of electric cars, and the construction of charging piles for electric cars has not kept up with them, which may become a dilemma for Tesla.
How can driverless cars get out of trouble?
Self-driving cars still have a long way to go from testing to mass production, and Internet technology companies have to keep investing in research and development to overcome technical difficulties. Automobile manufacturers also need to face the innovation and reform under the asset-heavy mode. At the present stage, driverless cars have entered the deep water area of research and development, and there will be no less difficulties.
First, driverless cars run afoul of existing laws. Driverless cars have emerged in the law of blank pages, declare the road test, granting licenses, ensure the normal test vehicles on the road and a series of problems are urgently needed to solve, the existing law could not meet, also cannot determine whether a driverless cars on the road normal illegal or irregular, and a technology mature besides constantly in the laboratory experiment, I’m going to move it to where it’s supposed to be and I’m going to do trial and error, and I’m going to collect data. “The law always lags behind the technology”, the lack of law is undoubtedly dragging the development of unmanned vehicles back.
Second, the ability of driverless cars to handle emergencies remains a question mark. As is known to all, emergency handling is human instinct, while self-driving car itself is a machine. It does not have the central nervous system like human brain, and does not have the reaction ability that human beings have, so it is still doubtful how artificial intelligence will respond in emergency handling. More importantly, people have a much lower tolerance for mistakes made by ARTIFICIAL intelligence than by humans themselves, which is one reason why a single accident of a driverless car can have a strong impact on the entire industry.
Third, the standardization of driverless cars is difficult to achieve. Driverless cars, like aircraft, need a set of response system to achieve direct communication between cars, and the increasingly fierce competition of driverless cars, various car companies, Internet giants research and development of different products, whether driverless cars can achieve product standardization and unification is still unknown.
Driverless cars are a progress of The Times. In the future, they will free people’s hands and make complicated driving simple, relaxed and interesting. However, from the practical point of view, the problems encountered in the development of driverless cars are emerging one by one. Only by overcoming technical obstacles and breaking people’s psychological defense can driverless cars enter people’s lives and be accepted by people.
Liu Kuang, meditation on the Internet, wechat official account: Liukuang110