According to Pony.ai WeChat official account, the Beijing Intelligent Connected Vehicle Policy Pioneering Zone issued the second-stage test permit for autonomous driving unmanned, Baidu Apollo, Pony.ai Became the first batch of enterprises approved to start the unmanned test qualification of “no one in the front row and people in the back row” in Beijing. This is the transitional stage of advancing the Robotaxi industry to “no one in the car”, and it is the prelude to the remote testing and travel services without safety personnel in the car.
After obtaining the permit, the 10 unmanned test vehicles of Pony.ai will start a new test form in the core area of 60 square kilometers in the Economic and Technological Development Zone, covering the complex urban road scenes in Yizhuang, which will help improve unmanned vehicles in a safe and controllable manner. Maximize the efficiency of technical verification, and gradually expand the scale and scope of testing.
This time, Baidu Apollo launched the first batch of 10 fifth-generation unmanned vehicles, Apollo Moon, to carry out front-row unmanned road tests within a 60-square-kilometer high-level autonomous driving demonstration zone in Beijing.
In October last year, the Beijing Intelligent Connected Vehicle Policy Pioneer Zone opened up autonomous driving and unmanned road tests, and at the same time issued the country’s first unmanned road test management implementation rules. The implementation rules clearly divide the test into three stages: “passenger driver”, “no one in the front row, people in the back row”, and “remote outside the vehicle”, orderly promoting the industry to enter the stage of unmanned vehicles. The detailed rules put forward requirements for applicants and test vehicles from the perspectives of application conditions and review, test supervision and management, traffic violations and accident handling, and violation handling.
Pony.ai said that compared with previous test forms, test forms such as “no one in the front row” and “remote outside the vehicle” are helpful for autonomous driving companies to deal with extreme scenarios, redundant system solutions, remote assistance platforms, and service operations. Experience, etc. give a more objective judgment, reduce the influence of human factors in the takeover, and obtain true and complete performance data.
Pony.ai has started unmanned tests with the main driver without a safety officer in Beijing, Guangzhou and other cities, and opened the corresponding Robotaxi service to the public. Carrot Run has launched autonomous driving commercial travel services in Beijing, Chongqing, Wuhan, Changsha, Hefei, Yangquan and other cities, among which Chongqing and Wuhan have realized autonomous driving commercial travel services without safety personnel in the car. As of July, the total order volume of Carrot Kuaipao exceeded 1 million orders, and Baidu has become the world’s largest self-driving travel service provider.
