Shanghai is at the forefront of China’s autonomous driving revolution, leveraging advanced 5G-A technologies to enhance smart vehicle testing. Recently, the city expanded its autonomous driving test infrastructure by adding 205 kilometers of roads, including expressways, bringing the total length of test roads to over 2,000 kilometers.
To date, Shanghai has attracted 32 licensed companies and 794 vehicles to conduct tests across 1,003 city roads. The inclusion of expressways diversifies the testing scenarios, allowing for more comprehensive self-driving simulations.
Lin Yu, general manager of Shanghai Jinqiao Intelligent Connected Vehicles Development Co., Ltd., shared with China Media Group (CMG) that the new test roads enable the collection of data from a broader range of scenarios. This data is crucial for refining algorithms and advancing research and development efforts.
“The test roads are gradually expanding from simple to more complex conditions. This is the first open test road in the city center that is completely in a real urban environment. The further and broader the car travels, the more cases it encounters, and we use them to debug our algorithms,” Lin explained.
In 2022, Shanghai enacted a special law for the Pudong New Area to facilitate the growth of the autonomous driving industry. The law mandates that monitoring equipment on testing vehicles upload real-time information such as speed, location, and driving status to the city’s monitoring center. This data serves as the basis for licensing vehicles for the next stages of testing and operation.
“There are many L4 (high-level driving automation) level test vehicles in Jinqiao as Pudong New Area has special legislation for autonomous driving, allowing vehicles that have reached the L4 level to be tested, applied and operated in the future,” Lin added.
Reference(s):
China's 5G-A techs upgrade smart autonomous driving test in Shanghai
cgtn.com
