Recently, FAW Jiefang has achieved a leapfrog breakthrough in its fully autonomous driverless technology – the L4-level driverless vehicles for factory logistics have been put into practice. Based on the complete development and manufacturing capabilities of Jiefang vehicles, intelligent driving systems, and cloud platforms, a low-cost, fully autonomous vehicle-cloud integrated solution has been constructed.
The driverless vehicles for factory logistics innovatively integrate three core technologies: Jiefang’s new generation of electronically controlled chassis platform, the independently developed intelligent driving system, and the digital cloud-based dispatching and management system for the whole link, to build an intelligent solution for the transfer of materials in the factory area. Through the triple technical guarantees of millisecond-level response of the electronically controlled actuators, multi-sensor fusion positioning, and dynamic path planning in the cloud, it can achieve precise transportation operations around the clock, 24 hours a day. It realizes the value characteristics of reducing the number of workers, high efficiency, and high safety, reduces the labor cost of the factory, improves the turnover efficiency of logistics transportation, and ensures the safe and reliable operation.
New Generation of Electronically Controlled Chassis Platform
The chassis of the driverless vehicles for factory logistics has a newly defined shape, reflecting a sense of technology and constructing the characteristics of Jiefang’s driverless vehicles in the factory area. It adopts a modular full-frame + skin-welded body, reducing the investment in molds and tooling, and ensuring that the cost and cycle are controllable. For the first time, pure electronically controlled steering and pure electronically controlled braking are applied to decouple the cab from the chassis. The remaining assembly components all use mature resources of the platform to ensure the reliability of the electronically controlled chassis.
Intelligent Driving System
The hardware of the intelligent driving system of the driverless vehicles for factory logistics uses mature resources of the platform. The basic software and sensor adaptation are all independently developed. The application software is fully self-developed in the whole stack. It adopts industry mainstream algorithms such as AI fusion perception based on multiple sensors, decision-making and planning based on rules, and lateral and longitudinal decoupling control. The intelligent driving functions are designed in a forward direction. Functions such as starting, driving, parking, and charging are decomposed in detail, and indicators such as perception accuracy, lateral and longitudinal control accuracy, and positioning accuracy are determined. It automatically receives the operation instructions from the operation control platform and conducts automatic operations, realizing functions such as active cruising, automatic obstacle avoidance, active coupling and uncoupling of trailers, and automatic parking, ensuring the stable and safe operation of driverless vehicles in complex scenarios in the factory area.
Digital Cloud-based Dispatching and Management System for the Whole Link
The cloud platform of the driverless vehicles for factory logistics is based on Jiefang’s Internet of Vehicles architecture. Combining with the analysis of scenario-based business, it defines five types of functions, namely vehicle condition management, operation dispatching, vehicle maintenance, map center, and user management, with an emphasis on realizing safety guarantees such as communication and dispatching. It adopts technologies such as microservice architecture and H5 interaction to achieve full-stack independent development, supporting the dynamic expansion of computing resources and platform functions. Through the WEB terminal + mobile terminal, functions such as transparent vehicle monitoring, intelligent remote control operation, safe one-click emergency stop, automatic charging management, and visual operation dispatching are realized, ensuring the efficient operation and safe management of the factory area.
With the continuous evolution of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and autonomous driving, the global automotive industry is undergoing a deep transformation from “electrification” to “intelligence”. FAW Jiefang always keeps in mind General Secretary Xi Jinping’s earnest entrustment of “mastering the key core technologies in our own hands and promoting the development of national automobile brands”. It takes innovation-driven development as the main engine of the enterprise’s development and uses innovative layout to deal with the changes of the times.
Facing the future, FAW Jiefang will take “Smart Globally” as its development concept. Focusing on the scene requirements of intelligent vehicle manufacturing, use, maintenance, and repair, it will focus on vehicle perception, decision-making, and execution. It will carry out collaborative research and development of key core technologies such as intelligent driving and the Internet of Vehicles, spare no effort to create intelligent vehicle products with high intelligence, and build a globally interconnected system.
