Recently, a piece of news has sparked heated discussions on the Internet.
Argo AI, the autonomous driving technology center, which was previously invested by Ford and Volkswagen, each accounted for 39% of the shares, collapsed.
As you can also see in the picture, Ford blamed the self-driving project for last quarter’s losses. In addition, Ford issued a statement claiming that “the company needs to invest in driver assistance technologies that are easier to achieve in the near term, rather than Argo’s goal of fully autonomous driving”;
The meaning of this statement is very clear. Ford wants more autonomous driving projects that can be quickly implemented in products in a short period of time, rather than projects that require a lot of time and investment but see no return.
Could this be the incompetence of Argo AI? On the contrary, the founders of this team all once held important positions in the self-driving teams of Google and Uber, and with billions of dollars in investment from Ford and Volkswagen, they have now ended up bankruptcy and dissolution, which is embarrassing. .
Coincidentally, there is another well-known company that also wants to achieve the goal of fully autonomous driving, and the investment is much larger and time-consuming than Argo AI. I believe that many of my friends have already guessed it, and it is Apple.
Apple’s research and development goal is also a car that can fully drive itself, which is often said to be above the L4 level of the automatic driving level. It can be said that Apple makes a car every year, but there is no news every year. It has been tossing for so long at the level of Apple, but still no results can be seen. It is evident how difficult it is to drive in the true sense of self-driving.
How far is autonomous driving technology from us?
Autonomous driving, in the final analysis, is to combine sensors and algorithms. Various sensors help the car perceive the surrounding environment. After collecting the corresponding environmental information, the data is transmitted to the chip for modeling and calculation, and then the next step should be decided. In this way, the accuracy, range, response speed of the sensor and the computing speed of the chip will greatly determine the ability of autonomous driving.
Airplanes and trains also have autonomous driving, why is it so difficult to achieve autonomous driving of cars?
First of all, even when the sky is so vast, the autopilot of the aircraft requires the tower to control the route to avoid intersection with other aircraft routes. The automatic driving of trains not only requires personnel to watch, but there is basically only one track, and there is no deviation.
And what about the car? The urban road conditions are complex. Whether it is the road surface, pedestrians, traffic lights, traffic lines or other traffic vehicles and other complex factors, the development of autonomous driving becomes extremely difficult. Sensors and algorithms can only be continuously optimized, but this not only requires relevant talents, but the cost of money and time consumed is not affordable by many companies or teams.
Fortunately, the test video of Xiaomi’s autonomous driving has given us some confidence. As long as a complete set of solutions comes out, there will be more and more solutions springing up, but considering the current development difficulty It is still the improvement of relevant laws and regulations in the future. Brother Agui believes that fully automatic driving still has a long way to go for us. I don’t know if you think so too? Welcome to leave your opinion in the comment area.