Development Status and Morphology Prediction of Autonomous Vehicles

Xian Yiyao

(Southwest University of Political Scienceand Law,Chongqing 401120)

Abstract:With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and internet of things,autonomous vehicles have become a new breakthrough in the development and reform of modern automobile industry.On the one hand,autonomous vehicles have great potential in improving road traffic efficiency,reducing traffic accidents and reducing energy consumption;on the other hand,the high cost and infrastructure investment,immature regulations and policies,privacy and information security and other adverse factors of cars themselves pose challenges to the future development of self-driving cars.This paper will analyze the development status of domestic and foreign autonomous vehicles and predict the future development trend of theindustry.

Keywords:artificial intelligence;automatic drive;industrial development;morphology prediction

With the rapid progress of modern science and technology,the emerging concept of artificial intelligence is increasingly closely related to social life.Autonomous vehicles,as the application of artificial intelligence technology in automobile,is a kind of car that realizes unmanned driving through environmental perception system,and it is close to the trend of commercialization and application.Autonomous driving,a highly developed product of artificial intelligence,as has been developing rapidly,has attracted extensive attention and consideration from all sectors of society.In 2016,the global research and development mode of selfdriving technology has gradually changed from a research-led model to an enterprise-led model.Under the agitprop of major investment institutions and enterprises,newly-established firm constantly spring up.Internet giants,chip companies have also joined the fray,who are not willing to be behind.After three years of rapid development,the global market of autonomous vehicles is still booming in 2019,but there are also risks.Happily,the research and development landscape of autonomous driving has taken shape,not only global capital market investment and market valuation scale,varying degrees of commercialization demonstration of autonomous driving,but also domestic and foreign governments allowing enterprises to carry out commercial deployment of autonomous driving policy support,both show the industry"s huge expectations for the future.Worryingly,the future direction of the world"s autonomous vehicles remains uncertain.The pressure of the intelligent transformation of traditional automobile enterprises will increase,new powers may seek technical alliances,Cross-border technology giants will continue to make solid progress in the research and development of intelligent driving and accelerate the process of mass production of cars,but start-ups may bedormant in the cold winter of capital[1].

I.Development Status of Autonomous Vehicles in Foreign Countries

Technologies involved in driverless cars including navigation and positioning,path planning,image recognition,machine learning and sensor fusion etc..Firstly,it needs to acquire and process environmental information,determine the current location based on data and algorithm,and plan a reasonable and optimal motion path according to the set goal,thereby,the vehicle can move according to the planned route and avoid obstacles in the process or take necessary safety measures in case of emergency.The imagination and practice of selfdriving cars can be traced back to 1920 at the earliest in foreign countries.The first was developed by National Highway Safety Administration of America, the second is developed by the international association of automobile engineers.Over the course of history,the IAE standard,also known as the SAE standard,is the classification principle pursued by the vast majority of mainstream self-driving researchers today.According to the classification criteria,except for some pilot areas,the majority of commercial vehicles currently produced on a daily basis are still between class 0 and class 1.The realization of automatic driving involves many technologies and disciplines,the sensors of its system including LIDAR,depth camera,global positioning system,long range radar,short range radar and so on.At the same time,it needs to integrate multiple software modules,including path planning, obstacle avoidance,positioning,image recognition and environment modeling.In addition,it also needs powerful hardware to process massive sensor information to achieve real-time control of the vehicle,so it puts forward extremely high requirements for system design aswell ashardwareand softwareresources.

From the practice of various countries,selfdriving cars will not be widely used in people"s daily life in the next few years,but some countries have made remarkable progress in technology,and some have started pilot zoning.KPMG recently released its 2019 autonomous vehicle readiness index report.The report considers four dimensions-policy and legislation,technology and innovation,infrastructure and consumer acceptance-to understand the readiness and openness of 25 countries to selfdriving technology.According to the report,the number one country is the Netherlands.The development of self-driving cars not only needs technical support, but also infrastructure construction.In the Netherlands,its road network carries a large amount of traffic and is well maintained.Its perfect road facilities are even rated as the most complete infrastructure by the global economy BBSand the world bank.And in terms of investing in research and development for autonomous driving,in addition to technical support from the automotive high-tech park at the University of Eindhoven,the Dutch government plans to invest 90 million euros in the renovation of more than 1,000 traffic lights to support road testing research on self-driving cars.In addition,the Dutch government has decided to work with Germany and Belgium to bring in a fleet of self-driving trucks from Amsterdam to Antwerp and Rotterdam to the ruhr valley,along with 5G technology to connect vehicles and 1,200 traffic lights.At the legal level,the Dutch government has passed new self-driving legislation that allows self- driving cars to experiment on public roads.As a technological power,the United States is also at the forefront of the strategic layout of self-driving cars in the world.In terms of technological innovation,there are more than 160 technology companies in the United States,covering traditional automobile manufacturers and new-type enterprises.Waymo is the strongest.The company is already in the business of self-driving taxi hailing,has made more partners,accumulated enough mileage in practice,and is trying to expand its business model by selling sensors.On the legal level,except for California,the United States has a relatively conservative policy towards self-driving cars on the whole.However,it has also released Preparing for the Future Traffic:Self-driving Car 3.0,which emphasizes the safety integration of the entire transportation system and self-driving cars.In addition,Japan and the European Union have also deployed.Toyota invested$1 billion to set up a technology research and development center in Michigan.The Japanese government proposed to achieve L3 level autonomous driving on domestic highways by 2020 and to put L4 level autonomous cars on the roads in the designated test area.In addition,the European Union has released The Road to Automated Travel:The EU"s Future Travel Strategy,which clarifies the schedule schedule of the industrialization of self-driving cars and proposes that Europe should take the lead in achieving the goal of fully automatic driving by 2030.At present,the vast majority of countries in the world have realized the importance of selfdriving technology, and incorporated the development of self-driving cars into the national planning,to fight for the commanding heights of the development of the intelligent automobile industry in the future,so as to seize the opportunities of the transformation and upgrading of the automobile industry and enhance the competitive strength of national science and technology.

II.Domestic Development of Autonomous Vehicles

As a big country of information technology industry,China is also at the forefront of the world in the exploration of self-driving technology.In the technology of autonomous driving, intelligent network construction in China has a certain leading edge.Although China lags behind European and American countries due to the late start of L2 and L3 in the field of self-driving cars,the government has issued relevant regulations to support the research, development and promotion and application of theautomatic operating systemof selfdriving cars.The cooperation between traditional automobile enterprises and Internet giants has accelerated the commercialization and industrialization of technology.Baidu set up its deep learning research institute in 2013 and has begun to enter the field of self-driving cars.In 2014,Baidu announced its research plan for self-driving car technology,and in 2015,it set up the self-driving business division to focus on this field.In 2017,Baidu decided to provide Apollo software platform to partners in the auto industry and the field of autonomous driving,and share the source code of trajectory planning, driving operation and environment perception of autonomous driving.Baidu also plans to have fully self-driving cars on highways and ordinary urban roads by 2020.At present,the first batch of self-driving car models jointly built by Baidu and Jinlong Bus have been sent to Beijing,Shenzhen,Pingtan,Wuhan and Tokyo for trial operation.Huawei,which is slightly behind Baidu in autonomous driving,published a white paper in 2016 detailing the value of mobile network operators in autonomous vehicles.The white paper includes data on intelligent parking,fleet management and on-board entertainment.Huawei reached an agreement with Vodafone in 2017 to demonstrate cellular technology.In 2018,Huawei launched a strategic cooperation with Audi,which will jointly promote the automation and digitalization of vehicle driving,and plans to launch a5Gvehiclejointly built by thetwosidesby 2020[2].

In terms of laws and supporting infrastructure,China has formulated a national strategic plan for the development of self-driving cars.The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology(MIIT)has released The Action Plan for the Industrial Development of the Internet of Vehicles(Intelligent Network Vehicles),which clearly states that by 2020,Chinawill achievebreakthroughsin thecrossindustry integration of the Internet of vehicles industry. As China"s automobile industry is promoting high-quality development in the direction of informatization and intellectualization,it is necessary for China to think from a higher perspective and a more macroscopic perspective on the construction of the governance system for each segment of road vehicles.The government should also further strengthen guidance and encourage exploration and construction of traffic solutions through continuous efforts,so as to achieve a high degreeof"human-vehicle-road-cloud"synergy[3].

III.Development Pattern of Autonomous Vehicles in the Future

Today,some emerging sensor technologies are being used in vehicleson a largescale,such asanticollision mechanism,road sign recognition system,driver facial expression detection, obstacle identification in all directions,deployment of airbag before collision,etc.These sensors can not only perceive the obstacle and predict its running track,but also maneuver to avoid the non-specific obstacle and take over the vehicle when needed.The application of these technologies not only ensures the safety of travelers,but also greatly stimulates the demand in the global market.At present,the environment perception technology with computer vision technology as the core is the main bottleneck of the implementation of automatic driving technology.Since 2012,a new round of deep learning AI has become the mainstream method of computer vision.It can ensure a significant improvement in the ability to detect,segment and identify target scenarios and their behavioral intentions.However,the new round of artificial intelligence is inseparable from the two-way support of high technology and big data.It is generally believed in the industry that the key to improve the environmental awareness should focus on the accumulation of high standards of subdivided application scenarios big data.The practical application of artificial intelligence or the competition in the automatic driving industry should be mainly reflected in the two main indicators,which are big data mileage and artificial intervention frequency,which indirectly reflect the maturity of the technology.In addition,the safety and reliability of autonomous driving systems are still of concern,as both life and information security are the lifeblood of the industry.In order to achieve commercialization and mass production,autonomous driving must be able to ensure the safety of passengers in the car under the complex and changeable driving environment,and protect the privacy of users in the development of information network.In addition,the rapidly emerging global self-driving industry ecology is a key breakthrough for leading enterprises.It is estimated that in five years"time,the global market value of self-driving cars is expected to exceed$100 billion,during which it may grow at a high compound annual growth rate[4].

IV.Conclusion

At the present stage,the technology of selfdriving cars is not yet mature.In addition,laws and regulations,social ethics and other factors do not allow the large-scale introduction of self-driving cars to the market.From a global perspective,the automatic driving industry is not quantified for commercial use at present. In essence, all enterprises are still in the stage of technology research and development before the industry landing.To seize the core technology is to seize the market opportunity.It is worth noticing that due to the immaturity of technology,accidents of selfdriving cars have occurred occasionally in recent years,leading to public doubts about their safety.But based on the current era of big data artificial intelligence, industry status quo, technical conditions,laws and regulations,and investment enthusiasm,it can be concluded that the field of autonomous driving will not be stopped by these things.In the future,by improving key technologies that can be mass produced,improving laws and regulations, formulating scientific and ethical standards,covering intelligent infrastructure and other means,the market of self-driving cars will show unlimited businessopportunities.