Armed with BeiDou navigation that's more accurate than GPS, Gaode Maps' autonomous driving goes one step further
As the research and development of automatic driving continues to deepen, relying solely on the & ldquo;sensor + control system” approach in the face of complex road conditions and processing of massive amounts of data has become increasingly stretched, and the depth of the integration of & ldquo;high-precision maps + high-precision positioning & rdquo;; put forward a new requirement.In mid-August 2017, Gaode Maps announced that it has entered into a strategic cooperation with Chisuo Location to reach a strategic cooperation, the two sides will work together to provide customers with & ldquo; high-precision maps + high-precision positioning & rdquo; comprehensive services.
“As the NO.1 in the map and navigation world and the NO.1 in the field of differential positioning services, this collaboration between Golder Maps and Chance Location will create the strongest high-precision positioning solution in the whole field, the whole scene, and deep integration. ” Wei Dong, president of Auto Division of Gaode, believes “ Precise positioning will become the next trigger. ” The two companies hope to work together to become the Internet of Things era travel industry 2.0 version of the infrastructure, their cooperation in the development of comprehensive solutions to support autonomous driving will be available as soon as the year.
Different from the previous cooperation focused on a single project, this time the Gaode map and Qianxun location to promote a full range of in-depth cooperation covering the data layer, algorithm layer, positioning service layer, hardware service layer and application layer. The two companies said that they will jointly develop a comprehensive solution that can be used by Tier 1 manufacturers and vehicle companies —— the program can not only help driverless cars realize their own accurate positioning in real time, but also timely and accurate understanding of the surrounding environmental information, to make up for the lack of relative positioning technology such as LIDAR based on a wide range of cuts to the industry's costs, and to promote the early marketization of driverless technology. Early marketization.
The cooperation between AutoNavi and Chance Location has a special significance. Chance Location Network Co., Ltd. is jointly funded by China National Armaments Industry Corporation and Alibaba Group, each accounting for 50% of the equity. The source of technology of Chance Location is China's independent research and development of & ldquo; Beidou satellite positioning system & rdquo;, Chance Location's license was established, marking the application of Beidou satellite navigation system has taken an important step. At present, Qianxun know inch (FindCM, centimeter-level high-precision positioning services) has reached the dynamic centimeter-level positioning level. And according to official information, Beidou satellite navigation system provides more accurate and reliable positioning than GPS. This means that in the future, Gaode's positioning capability will be rapidly upgraded.
In automatic driving, Gaode Maps has completed the collection of high-precision maps of the national highway in the field of high-precision maps, and has established a & ldquo; independent collection + crowdsourcing collection & rdquo; high-precision map UGC system and automated data production model, which realizes the automated process from data discovery, scheduling, collection, processing to on-line. Relying on the 1450 ground-based enhancement stations throughout the country consisting of & ldquo; a national network & rdquo; and powerful independent research and development algorithms, Chance Location can provide vehicles with accurate stopping, heading control and other functions in most areas of the country 7× 24 hours a day.
At present, including Changan, Geely, Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and other almost all the domestic mainstream automobile brands, have reached a cooperation with Gaode based on online navigation and location information services, and Chance Position is also the core supplier of most of the OEMs, the two sides will effectively promote the upgrading of the high-precision maps, and at the same time, play a direct role in promoting the role of automatic driving. “In 2018, to achieve centimeter-level positioning service China-wide coverage; in 2019, to achieve meter-level service global coverage. ” Chen Jinpei, CEO of Chance Location, said.
Wei Dong believes that & ldquo; high-precision maps + high-precision positioning & rdquo; service will definitely become the necessary foundation for building a smart transportation system, which is also an important step for Golder to move towards the AI 2.0 era. “AI 2.0” refers to the aggregation of effective big data and analysis and processing, to provide intelligent solutions for people's travel, including individual and globalization, as well as providing support for the traffic control system. This is the future direction of transportation development proposed by Weidong in early August 2017 this year, and the relative
Corresponding “AI 1.0” that is, monolithic artificial intelligence. Gaode and Qianxun location both belong to the Alibaba system, Gaode's strategic layout reflects the layout of Ali in the field of automatic driving, in addition to Ali, the Internet three giants BAT, Baidu and Tencent are also in the active layout.
Ali and Baidu are increasingly fierce, while Tencent is slightly inferior because it lacks the same powerful layout as Ali and Baidu in basic areas such as maps. Baidu and Ali's competition tit for tat, and it is worth mentioning that & ldquo; AI 2.0 & rdquo; strategy is also a strategic deployment of Ali in the automatic driving against Baidu Apollo program.
Baidu & ldquo; Apollo program & rdquo; is an important part of Baidu AI, which provides an open software platform to Baidu partners in the automotive industry and the field of automated driving to help them combine the vehicle and hardware systems to quickly build a set of their own complete automated driving system. Baidu is to provide partners with & ldquo; Apollo & rdquo; of the automatic driving technology, while partners to Baidu to provide valuable data. However, Gaode believes that at this stage is not the time when software dominates everything, it is still the stage of hardware-enabled software, and thus its strategy centers on how to provide supporting services for car companies.
Based on this, in October 2016, Gaode proposed to provide free high-precision map data to car companies and partners during the test of automatic driving. In nearly a year, Gaode has nearly 20 in-depth partners in high-precision maps. “Gaode is focusing on travel based on the layout of intelligent transportation. ” Wei Dong said. And at this stage, artificial intelligence in the field of travel services to do is to think about how to let the machine to complete the things that humans can not do well, rather than focusing on how to let the machine to replace people.
