Travel industry is under the impetus of artificial intelligence drastic change.This year, do not do self-driving big company is not a good company.Overseas, Google, Apple all the way from their own research and development of self-driving, domestic, BAT have entered. Listing of Huawei, also eyeing the travel industry, the first car news came out, and later, with its strong communications technology as the basis, reached the field of automatic driving.
Huawei how to sneak in the autopilot, what kind of hand in the hand holding the card, but also how to choose to play? Car thing combing in this one.
1
Making cars or automatic driving: take the old apple?
Under the wave of motorization, new forces trying to get involved in repairers are numerous, with the exception of new car-making campaigns started by domestic and foreign start-up companies such as Fisker, Lucid, Wei Lai, Xiaopeng, etc. Internet tech giants such as Google and Apple also Had its own car repairer program, but the communications giants, it touches rarely made in the car activities on the rumored, but Huawei is an exception.
In October last year, Huawei was handed over to build a car by Canadian auto parts maker Magna, a Canadian OEM that sells BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar Land Rover, etc. in the body, chassis and powertrain. And Magna once said, 'If there is a demand in the Chinese market, you can buy a factory locally or start working with a local OEM.'
In fact, this is not the first time Huawei has been sent to set foot in. In 2015, the glory of the official microblogging once released a picture, Honor Honor As the car appeared in the front of an Audi models.At that time people have speculated that Huawei will make cars with Audi.After the mystery was announced, but glory of the listing of new models campaign.
In 2015, Huawei repeatedly stressed that it will not make its own cars, but to provide a 5G-based car networking service.However, a Gree air-conditioned, previously in the automotive industry can be described as no accumulation, are daring to flat From high buildings.While widely engaged in the automotive industry partner Huawei, came to make cars scandal is not difficult to understand.
More specifically, in the era of mobile Internet, Huawei, a mobile communications company, has personally made mobile phones to compete with each other in the communications industry. As the mobile Internet has matured, the stock market in the smart phone market has tended to Stable, and the car is considered the next generation of mobile terminals.At this time to create their own car brand, will help occupy the Internet car market, just as Huawei had cut into the smart phone market.
However, the technical difficulty of making cars, the cost and the risk are so great that even Apple has chosen to give up and turn into the road to build an autonomous driving system. And entering the automobile manufacturing industry means that with the existing OEM partners Therefore, under the trade-off, Huawei is not likely to make much repairs in the moment, and more auto talents are absorbed in assisting the development of automatic driving technology. The high technology of autopilot occupies a considerable position in Huawei's future strategy, And its layout is much broader than we thought, and it's no less than Apple, which is also developing autonomous driving.
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Huawei automatic driving: car networking for the kernel
1, force V2X, build car network 'cloud pipe end'
Huawei has already begun to deeply intervene in another major new direction of the automobile industry - the car networking when the automatic air-access does not start. In 2013, Huawei launched the car-mounted communication module ME909T for cars and entered the car networking to fund Huawei's future autopilot It has laid a foreshadowing, this is the origin of Huawei and automatic driving.
In 2015, Huawei received orders for communication modules from Audi and Mercedes.
In the previous year, in October and November 2014, Huawei successively signed cooperation agreements with Dongfeng, Chang'an and FAW to jointly develop in the field of car networking and smart cars. At that time, no one would put the word 'smart car' and auto-driving Linked, because if only the introduction of a simple vehicle communication module, nothing more than let the vehicle has the ability to upload and download online data only, is closer to the phone.
1) Pull on Qualcomm and push C-V2X
Things started to change at the other end of 2015. This year, 3GPP started to standardize C-V2X research and Huawei was one of its key enablers, with C representing Cellular and wireless cellular networks, and V2X Vehicleto X , Vehicles and various types of terminals. The C-V2X is a set of technologies and standards based on wireless cellular networks that enable vehicles equipped with such communication modules to own and communicate with other vehicles (V2V), infrastructure (V2I), pedestrians (V2P) ), Which will enable the vehicle to keep track of other traffic participants' information, such as which car is on track and which of the green lights will turn red, while the control of global information will significantly reduce traffic accidents Occurrence rate, to ease traffic congestion. Based on cellular network communication capabilities, motorists will have environmental perception of over-the-horizon. (Readers who wish to have a more systematic understanding of V2X can read the Automatics Series: , V2X Why become a self-driving clairvoyance)
However, prior to the birth of the C-V2X, there was already a pioneer in the field of V2X, DSRC, a dedicated short-haul communication that has a slightly different principle than the C-V2X and has a history similar to WiFi for more than a decade Due to the long development period and the push from the US government, DSRC now has a mature chip solution and an application example. On the 2017 Cadillac CTS, the DSRC is equipped with a DSRC communication module that can be sent to vehicles that also carry this communication module Tips, warnings, distress and other information.
However, DSRC needs to be set up and needs to be re-established. When C-V2X is set up, the DS-R is based directly on the LTE network developed today (that is, the 4G network) and the cost of building base stations is greatly reduced.
After seeing this direction, Huawei is working hard with Qualcomm, a rival Qualcomm, to promote the C-V2X standard landing and testing.In September 2016, when the 5G Auto Alliance was established, the Audi BMW Daimler was in it, Huawei and Qualcomm also became sponsors to promote the C-V2X. In the same month, the V2V standard in C-V2X was also frozen first, and in March 2017, Huawei and Qualcomm announced that they would build a C-V2X system in Hong Kong Intelligent Mobile Systems (ITS) help reduce traffic accidents.
Compared with the solution of using the sensor to capture the environment information and make autonomous driving decision, once the C-V2X is completed and put into operation, the unmanned vehicle with this technology can get local information hundreds of meters away , Instantly convey the intent of traffic participants to change - that is, with the C-V2X, unmanned aerial vehicles can see farther, faster response, the natural ability and safety of automatic driving even higher.
However, the existing 4G network still can not meet the demand of high-speed autopilot in terms of bandwidth and delay, so Huawei has also directly targeted 5G on this basis.The theoretical downlink bandwidth of 5G exceeds 10Gb / s and the delay is only For a few milliseconds, at a speed of 100 km / h, if the cloud commands a brake, the delay caused by the delay is only 1.35 meters, while in the 4G network, the delay is more than 10 meters.
In February 2017, Huawei conducted a 5G autopilot test in its already active Germany, one of which was an emergency coordinated braking of vehicles - the vehicle was immediately braked and passed on to the rear vehicle in milliseconds, while the rear vehicle Immediately stop.Human drivers to deal with such a reflection of the time, approaching the limit up to tens of milliseconds, slow to 1 second up in high-speed scenes, more than 1 second response delay means more out Dozens of meters, which is often the distance between life and death.
▲ Japan is also developing test-intensive formation of unmanned convoy
It is also thanks to this capability that Huawei also tested the ultra-close fleet of high-speed unmanned transport fleets that, when the technology is mature, will likely support unmanned vehicles at high speed at densely spaced distances of less than 5 meters to take advantage of The airflow of the front car reduces wind resistance and saves energy.
2) Unmanned Another Dimension: Remote Control Driving
In addition to the driverless crowded fleet, Huawei has another set of 'driverless'.
In June this year, Shanghai World Mobile Conference, Huawei and SAIC, mobile cooperation, demonstrated a driverless vehicle. Accurately speaking, is remote driving.
▲ SAIC iGS smart car
In the live demonstration, the driver faced three screens, just like driving a car in the video game city, and operating the SAIC iGS smart car in Jiading Park, 30 km away, started, accelerated, decelerated, and braked. People car 'can support the safe driving speed of 50 km / h.The back is still working is still 5G.Through the Huawei-designed 5G communication module, this iGS SAIC in the millisecond delay and driving 30 km The control center sends and receives signals.
▲ driver in the control of unmanned vehicles 30 km away
For some people, it's simply superfluous to let a driver sit in the steering wheel and control a car while roaring to liberate people, but remote driving has its own advantages. One of the most important points is that As future vehicles, and especially commercial vehicles, enter the truly unmanned phase, they will need a manual, remote intervention to deal with the failure of autonomous driving systems because there are no drivers on board.
Even in the present, we can find examples of the need for this technology, such as the highly hazardous special construction area, which can be used to remotely control car driving to ensure human safety.
Looking back, we can see that Huawei is based on the logic of a cloud-based end of the communication network, whether it is in the V2X car network or remote-controlled driving, and Huawei, in turn, provides communication equipment for communication operators. The depot provides a communication module that opens up real-time communication pipelines between autonomous vehicles and the cloud to enhance the ability of such real-time communications to drive autopilot.
2, quietly recruiting team to explore new technology direction
However, even with a strong 5G blessing, V2X alone will not be able to complete true autopilot as V2X will never be able to detect those movements that are not part of its eco-traffic participants - even assuming that all people in the world, all cars, With all traffic lights connected to the V2X, there are still unforeseen scenarios on the road - such as dogs suddenly rushing to the center of the road, while a dog is obviously less likely to get into the road with a V2X-enabled device.
At this point, the importance of the sensor-based sensing solution adopted by today's self-driving startups is evident, and Huawei is not willing to completely overwhelm the area.
Huawei has tens of thousands of people in R & D as a whole, and its technical superiority now comes from the input of manpower and financial resources. In order to ensure that it does not fall behind in technology competition, Huawei has established a huge research and development system. Starting with 2012 Labs, Ark Laboratories, Shannon Laboratories and other statements outside.
Huawei Research Center for Vehicle Networking and Research, part of the Central Research Institute under the Huawei 2012 Laboratory, is a powerful force in Huawei's research system. In recent years, this R & D department has recruited a large number of master's and doctoral students in vehicle engineering, Driving, ADAS, vehicle control direction.From the recruitment situation, although the crown of the Internet of Things is the name of car networking, but obviously also interested in sensor-based automatic driving.
▲ Huawei open the car online, automatic driving related recruitment information
However, although Huawei has been hiring for a long time, but in this area is very low profile, has been a rare wind release its autopilot-related clearest leak map, but also a blurred outline of the vehicle frame picture. Humble suspicion test car, also can not help but wonder whether this is in line with Huawei and Tsinghua University "cooperation" identity.
Huawei's auto-driving hiring on the go-go and output on the dumb fire, people puzzled, while a Huawei insiders to the car things to answer Huawei's logic of this approach.
At present, from Huawei's partners, its customers who mainly face autopilot will still be a large number of OEMs who are relatively conservative and more value-conscious in the advancement of autonomous driving Demand is actually ADAS.Huawei's intelligent driving in cooperation with Dongfeng, Chang'an, FAW, and so on, the first specific form is ADAS, while Huawei will cooperate with suppliers of ADAS solutions and provide them with the main capabilities of ADAS, while Huawei will adopt its The C-V2X excels at gaining BVR visibility with limited field of view and further enhances ADAS functionality.
But on the other hand, Huawei also wants to ensure that it is not completely passive and becomes an "lay person" who can only rely on others in the sensor solution. Therefore, Huawei has also invested a lot of resources in sensor-based autopilot while carrying forward-looking and Engineering research and development.
3
Communications companies across the board into automatic driving
In fact, Huawei is just a microcosm of technology companies joining the auto-driving tide, and companies similar to Huawei, including ZTE, Ericsson and Qualcomm, all belonging to ICT (Information, Communication, Technology), are also very active in layout.
In China, ZTE is Huawei's old rival in the field of communications - whether it is the communication of smart phones or the communication of smart cars. ZTE fought with both fists in new energy vehicles and autopilot, not only building a depot in Zhuhai but also making new Energy bus, but also in their own car to join the autopilot function, and even further to create a smart traffic city.
▲ ZTE smart city traffic model
Ericsson, based in Northern Europe, once used the brand "Sony Ericsson", which had been married to Sony in the era of 2g, and later faded out of handset manufacturing to focus on communications. When auto-driving and 5G were approaching, Ericsson and Huawei Similarly, based on the 5G network to develop a remote driving program, in October last year, Ericsson partnered with the Swedish Transit Corporation to provide pilot support for the unmanned bus EZ10 built by EasyMobile with a 5G signal and conducted a manned trial run.
Qualcomm, which previously had a lack of accumulation in the automotive electronics market, cut through the automotive market with a very thorough acquisition of NXP, the world's largest car-mounted semiconductor maker. On the one hand, Qualcomm and Huawei sought cooperation in the competition to jointly promote the C-V2X standard .Huawei Haisi two years ago were Audi and Mercedes-Benz car carrier chip orders, and Qualcomm is based on the mobile terminal Soc Snapdragon 820 launched the Snapdragon 820A available for ADAS. In September of this year, Qualcomm also released before Huawei First C-V2X vehicle communication chipset.
On the other hand, NXP, which has been plugged in by Qualcomm, has a wide variety of on-board semiconductor production lines and has a particularly important self-driving on-board computer - the first generation of Bluebox primarily for ADAS. Development and security needs, NXP last month introduced the main security and scalable S32 chip platform.
In addition to them, Cisco, Nokia Siemens is also ready to take a pledge for autopilot, or acquisition or research and development.
▲ Cisco's smart driving program on display at 2017MWC
▲ Nokia demonstrated 5G vehicle control at 2017MWC
Among the top names in the world for communications equipment, only Motorola and Alcatel-Lucent (which have been acquired by Nokia) are relatively calm and do not engage in too much big news on autopilot. It can be said that the core terminal of the entire communications industry, the car The weight is driving, the rapid development of car networking under the gradual increase, make potential to keep pace with smart phones.
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Conclusion: Huawei's new challenge
Not listed but the remuneration level fame Huawei, always with a muffled big money show people.
In almost all major companies are eagerly chasing the autopilot, Huawei also uphold the tradition has always been to low-key to raise resources to prepare for the next big game.
While Huawei's most powerful is to provide communications capabilities, but its business boundaries, has long been beyond the scope of a communications equipment business.
But involved in the field of automatic driving, Huawei's rival is actually doubled - both with its competition in the mobile phone market, Apple, Samsung, but also in the communications market and Huawei hurriedly chase after the equipment maker giants. Huawei challenges , Will be more intense than the mobile Internet era.