Chinese startup Human Horizons unveils a demo of the world’s first urban road autonomous driving

Human Horizons, a new Chinese startup that is developing smart cars linked to data-driven highways and AI-powered cities, today unveils its Smart Road Demonstration Project, the demo the company claims to be the world’s first Cooperative Intelligent Transportation System (C-ITS). The system is delivered through its “Open Urban Road Test Project for Sensor Data Fusion and Computational Coordination” technology. This is a specific implementation of the “Smart Transportation” project under Human Horizons’ “3-Smart” (Smart Vehicle, Smart Transportation and Smart City) Strategy.

Founded by Ding Lei, Human Horizons is building an information network for intelligent vehicles to enable them to communicate with one another to further develop the efficiency of automated driving technology. The information network is one of the most important assets and components for smart cities of the future. Lei Ding has more than 20 years of experience and influence in vehicle industry value chain, new energy, intelligent connectivity, sharing economy, international cooperation, cross-border mergers and acquisitions, industrial investment. Before founding Human Horizons, Lei Ding worked in Shanghai VW, Shanghai GM and SAIC and served as General Manager of SGM and VP of SAIC. Human Horizons plans to deliver 50,000 unit sales by 2021.

Commenting on the demo, Ding Lei, founder and chairman of Human Horizons said: “Smart Transportation is an important component of smart cities. It is one of the best areas for implementing AI and Big Data analysis technologies. This is receiving great attention in major countries around the world. Building ‘Smart Roads’ is of strategic significance to the transformation and upgrade of the auto industry and to the creation of smart city ecosystems.”

Using “Road Sensing”, “Cloud Computing Coordination” and “In-Vehicle Control” technologies as building blocks, the “Smart Road” Demonstration Project simulates and integrates complex and detailed real-life traffic scenarios. These include intra- and inter-city traffic, highway and overpass traffic and comprehensive traffic dispatch. It also supports the testing of L3 (conditional), L4 (high level) and L5 (full) autonomous driving, and the testing of all types of smart vehicles. In addition, the “Smart Road” Project leads the way in utilizing 5G communications for data transfer and cloud computing.

All this makes the Smart Road Project the world’s first open urban road test based on Sensor Data Fusion and Computational Coordination between roads and vehicles. This establishes a solid foundation for comprehensive optimization of traffic management, autonomous driving and smart transportation of the future.

As a key part of the “Smart Road” Project, HH has developed “H.H Pilot” (for autonomous driving), “H.H Parking” (for autonomous parking), and “H.H RSA-C” (Road-Sensing Architecture for V2X Coordination), enabling the vehicle to deal with multiple and complex scenarios in real-life traffic. The three technological platforms work together to ensure road safety, alleviate traffic congestion, and efficiently allocate road resources. The birth of these three advanced platforms will also help solve some constraints of autonomous driving such as high equipment costs and limited sensing (e.g. around blind corners). It will play a disruptive role in promoting the large-scale adoption of autonomous driving in the future. Smart road enabled autonomous driving will be more time-efficient, more reliable, more agile, and more intelligent.

All of this results in the HH Smart Road Project being technically more advanced than similar projects both locally and globally.

The “Smart Road” Project provides a good example of systematically solving urban transportation issues and improving the effectiveness of urban management. It signifies a further step towards the creation of a smart city. HH is striving to realize “four times worry-free” mobility – “driver(human)-free, accident-free, congestion-free, and road rage-free”.

When it comes to the vision for changing how people will travel in the future, Human Horizons is aiming high. The company is always pursuing “human-oriented” changes, looking at and solving issues from a holistic perspective. In the future, the “Smart Road” will also be opened to other industry players, allowing road testing of smart vehicles and self-driving vehicles installed with in-vehicle communication devices for V2X coordination. With this, Human Horizons would like to collaborate with other companies to create an ecosystem that will accelerate the implementation of Smart Transportation Strategies.

The 2019 German-Chinese Automotive Congress will be held in Germany Ingolstadt Deputy Mayor pays a visit to Human Horizons Chairman Ding Lei (Source: Human Horizons)