China's first route for the commercial operation of autonomous driving was recently launched in the central business district of Wuhan, capital city of Central China’s Hubei province, according to a statement made by the Wuhan Economic & Technological Development Zone, also known as the WHDZ.
The Smart Panda Bus, a multi-functional AI-based autonomous driving vehicle will soon start operating on the route, officials said.
It has the visually striking design features of a giant panda and was developed by DeepBlue Technology, an artificial intelligence firm based in China.
Measuring 12 meters long, it is also 2.25 meter wide and 3.25 meter high. The bus has a weight of about 10 tons and is powered by a lithiumion phosphate battery.
Its autonomous driving level is between Level 3 and Level 4, which means it does not require human interaction in most situations.
In addition to its self-driving features, the bus also has a fingerprint recognition system, as well as an in-vehicle robot and an intelligent emergency escape system.
To ensure passengers’ safety, smart buses need to undergo strict safety tests, including tests on speed limit information identification and responses, follow-up driving, parallel driving, roadside parking, detection and avoidance of oncoming vehicles.
Officials said the results show that collision between people and vehicles in the system will not happen. Manual intervention was only carried out three times during the thousand-time tests and the pass rate was 99.7 percent.
As one of China's first batch of 5G pilot cities, Wuhan has the technical advantages of intelligent connected vehicles, providing infrastructure support for the operation of autonomous driving.
Earlier in September, the city issued commercial licenses for unmanned vehicles to three businesses – Baidu, Haylion Technologies Co and DeepBlue, the first of its kind in the world.
The licenses were issued in the National Intelligent Connected Vehicle (Wuhan) Test and Demonstration Zone located in WHDZ.
It is the first intelligent network-connected vehicle demonstration area in China, based on full coverage by the 5G communications technology V2X vehicle road coordination system.
The first unmanned minibus Sharing-VAN -- which was developed by Dongfeng and incorporates 5G long-distance driving technology -- has no steering wheel, throttle and brakes, and the interior looks like a living room. [Photo/WeChat account of WHDZ]
