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If you're in mountain view city and you've just seen a car roaring by, it's probably waymo. As for the electric vehicle with the highest audience rate in shanjingcheng, it is the only one. Now, however, waymo is going to take the lead in both electric and automatic driving, because waymo has successively installed automatic driving teams from the pure electric i-pace ordered. In the next two years, the number of this model will increase rapidly to 20000. At first glance, the new i-pace team has little difference from the prototype car renderings released by waymo two years ago. However, if you look closely, waymo added a lot of "careful thinking" this time. These changes may imply the future of autopilot cars. First of all, the configuration of two lidars on the roof of Pacifica test car has been reduced to one, and the new lidar can fully detect medium and long-range tasks. Secondly, the lidar on the wheel arch has a new helper - the camera that is responsible for detecting the surrounding environment. As for the location of Jaguar's logo, it was replaced by a combination of a lidar and a camera. From this point of view, it can not be overemphasized to say that waymo replaced the i-pace prototype car this time. In the past few years, hundreds of engineers have made radical changes to waymo's early autopilot hardware, especially the three key sensors, camera, radar and lidar. As a good company, almost all of waymo's autopilot hardware has been self-developed, and i-pace has become the first vehicle to enjoy the fifth generation of waymo's autopilot hardware package. According to Satish jeyachandran, waymo's Hardware Director, i-pace with the fifth generation of automatic driving hardware package can see farther and more clearly. Take the camera. The sensor can collect data 500 meters away. At the same time, the tolerance of all sensors to bad weather is further improved. In addition, with simple configuration, the system can also be directly transplanted to waymo's autopilot heavy card. Most importantly, the capacity of these parts is enough to equip the commercial self driving fleet. Waymo also claims that the system is more suitable for mass production, more powerful, and costs half of the previous generation of automated driving hardware. The new generation of sensor package is the crystallization of waymo's long-term secret research and development. When it was born in 2009 in the name of project chauffeur, the predecessor of waymo, Google used off the shelf products, such as the $80000 velodyne lidar. The test car was a Prius bought from a dealer. Soon after, Google produced its own lidar and in 2012 officially equipped the Lexus SUV in the self driving fleet. In developing the naive "firefly" autopilot, Google used more self-developed hardware (even seats made by Google itself). After the split into the army in 2016, waymo soon gave up the dream of car building, but the research and development of sensors and computer systems did not relax. As we all know, software can think for itself, but it depends on rich and reliable data. Therefore, to ensure that the vehicle meets waymo's standards, you have to do it yourself. "We realize that off the shelf products can't meet waymo's requirements for autonomous driving. "Said jeyachandran. With the first mover advantage and sufficient financial support from the parent company, waymo has the ability to "hold back the big moves". However, in order to hold back the big moves, waymo paid a considerable price, such as the salaries of hundreds of engineers. The most important thing is that it takes a long time for the money to pay off. In 2012, waymo said it would cost $150000 to buy a car's self driving gear alone. Five years later, in 2017, waymo announced that the price of self-developed lidar was more than 90% cheaper than in 2016. For the self driving taxi and transportation market, waymo is really fighting. This week, waymo opened up for the first time to receive $2.25 billion in external investment, after being supported by its parent company, alphabet. Waymo is not the only company that does its own research at any cost. Almost all the top players in the industry have their own hardware projects. In addition to the reason of fierce competition, the circle of automatic driving industry is too small, and the suppliers are not mature, which is also the reason why everyone has to study their own hardware. At present, players in the industry are developing their own hardware. Cruise, Argo and Aurora have all acquired laser radar start-ups. While developing their own lidar, these companies will also purchase products for testing. Compared with the above-mentioned companies, waymo has a huge first mover advantage: after multiple iterations, its products are more widely used. In the new i-pace test car, the most worrying thing is the configuration of a single lidar on the roof. After all, this sensor has to be used for both long-range and medium-range detection. Although waymo did not disclose the detailed specifications of the lidar, an engineer at waymo insisted that the use of the new architecture allowed it to have a resolution 10 times higher than the previous generation. Although lidar is the mainstay of the whole detection system, the automatic driving vehicle can not be short of cameras (with better detection distance and resolution) and radar (without weather interference and speed measurement). As a result, waymo has also redeveloped cameras and radars. The new i-pace is equipped with 29 cameras, which can minimize the impact of light conditions and extreme weather, and the new wheel arch camera can keep an eye on the foreign objects close to the vehicle. Thanks to the efforts of waymo engineers, radar is almost "reborn". Nowadays, most of the commercial models with ADAS system rely on radar to complete adaptive cruise and other functions, but these models always ignore some details. As a result, waymo simply pushed it back and researched the radome, antenna, circuit board, mechanical shell, firmware, software, etc. General radar can only tell the system, "how many meters away an object is from us, and how fast it can travel.". The new technology of Waymo can provide a clear enough resolution, so that the automatic driving system can distinguish whether a truck or a car is a front, a bicycle or a pedestrian. To protect the onboard computer, waymo's engineers also specially designed waterproof rubber pads, because ghosts know what will flow out of passengers' luggage. The camera also has special protection. The 16 cameras behind the main lidar have their own wipers to prevent the camera from being blocked by dust or rain. Before the official loading, the whole sensor system has to undergo "barbaric" tests, such as the heat wave in death valley and the severe winter in Michigan. It is reported that waymo has completed the first phase of closed route and durability test, and the next step is to go on the road for inspection. As the global head autopilot, waymo is not only the leader in technology, but also the leader in cost through the update iteration of lidar, millimeter wave radar and camera: reduce the cost of sensor by half through self-developed hardware. Car Center learned that the first i-pace with the fifth generation of hardware will first land in Silicon Valley, and then be incorporated into the waymo one team in the suburb of Phoenix. Later, the hardware will be transplanted to waymo's autopilot heavy card. Of course, after the fifth generation of hardware package, there must be the sixth and seventh generation, until waymo finally realizes the dream of fully automatic driving. This is an original article by Li Li. If you need to reprint it, please contact authorized. Any illegal reprint shall be prosecuted.