Bosch's autonomous driving strategy

Regarding autonomous driving, Bosch's official website describes it as follows:

You can take a commuter car to work, have a relaxing breakfast and read the newspaper. You are no longer stuck in traffic jams, your car will automatically take you wherever you want to go. And it will be safer than it is now, because self-driving cars can greatly reduce the number of accidents. They can perceive and avoid critical situations faster than drivers, and strictly follow traffic rules and never get tired. Even in an emergency, they react much faster than drivers.

It sounds very tempting. So, how will Bosch use technology to turn its vision of autonomous driving into reality?

Image source: Bosch

“Dual Strategy” Leading the Way

In the field of autonomous driving, Bosch has adopted a "dual strategy", that is, while promoting the mass production of L2 and L3 autonomous driving technologies and gradually developing autonomous driving, it is also carrying out research and development and pilot work on L4 and L5 fully autonomous driving and highly automated unmanned driving.

Compared with the "one-step" development route of Waymo, Uber, GM Cruise and other companies, Bosch's "two-legged approach" is obviously much safer. As we all know, the development of autonomous driving is a very "money-burning" project. Even a large company like Bosch cannot completely ignore the return on investment. After all, Bosch has more than 400,000 employees around the world to support.

In addition, as far as autonomous driving itself is concerned, the real demand of consumers is still at the L1-L3 level for the ADAS market. Even if mature L4 and L5 models are available on the market at this stage, it is still a question whether consumers dare to use them or can afford them.

Based on the "dual strategy", Bosch will work on both the mass production of low-level autonomous driving technology and the research and development of high-level autonomous driving technology. On the one hand, this will allow Bosch to enjoy the market dividends brought by autonomous driving technology earlier. On the other hand, it will ensure that when the driverless era truly arrives in the future, Bosch will continue to maintain its first-mover advantage. It can be said to have the best of both worlds.

Image source: MG

In fact, it is not just Bosch. Currently, many traditional car companies and parts companies are taking two routes in parallel in the research and development of autonomous driving: "gradual development" and "one-step approach". Specifically, Bosch has realized many ADAS functions with the above technologies, including remote parking assistance, traffic congestion assistance, highway assistance, etc., and has been widely installed in mass-produced vehicles.

For example, in the first half of 2018, Bosch provided Geely Borui with L2-level autonomous driving traffic congestion assistance and automatic parking assistance functions, and also cooperated with Great Wall WEY VV6, Roewe Marvel X, Changan CS55, etc. in mass production. In 2019, Bosch's ADAS system was successively installed on new cars such as the new Baojun RS-5 , the new MG ZS , and the Zotye TS5. According to the plan, this year Bosch will provide L2-level advanced driving assistance system solutions for nearly 40 local models. Bosch ultimately expects its sales in the field of autonomous driving to grow by 12% this year, reaching 2 billion euros.

Starting next year, Bosch will begin to produce L3 autonomous driving systems, which will realize functions such as one-button parking, autonomous driving on highways, and autonomous driving in traffic jams.

In the development of high-level autonomous driving, Bosch chose to use automatic valet parking technology as the entry point, which is a very wise approach. At present, L4 and L5 autonomous driving still face great challenges in environmental perception, system intelligence, computing power, system architecture, functions and information security. In addition, the supporting regulations and standards are not perfect, and consumer acceptance is limited. It is considered difficult to implement on a large scale in a short period of time. In comparison, autonomous driving used in closed scenes such as mining areas, ports, and parks, as well as specific functions such as parking, is generally favored because the operating environment is relatively simple.

In this field, Bosch mainly promotes related research and development through cooperation with Daimler. In July this year, the fully automatic driverless parking function jointly developed by Bosch and Daimler officially obtained permission without human supervision in Germany. It is reported that this is the first time in the world that L4 autonomous driving technology has been approved by the government and can be put into real life. Based on this function, users only need to click on their smartphones to realize automatic parking and return of the vehicle, realizing fully automatic driverless parking without human supervision or driver operation.

Image source: Bosch

Unlike many AVP systems on the market that are vehicle-oriented, the technical core of Bosch's AVP system is field-side master control. Whether it is a new or existing parking lot, it only needs to deploy corresponding sensors at specific locations - currently single-line lidar scanning, which will be iterated to the Godview mode formed by Bosch's own binocular high-definition camera - to scan the entire parking lot in real time, plan the corresponding route, and issue the entry route to the T-BOX in the vehicle through V2X technology, so as to direct the vehicle to move forward. The advantage of this technical route is that it can help OEMs avoid the increased cost of car manufacturing due to the need to adapt the AVP system. It is much simpler and more practical to transform parking lots than to lobby all car companies to uniformly change vehicle designs according to scene applications.

In order to promote the commercialization of this technology as soon as possible, Bosch recently reached a strategic cooperation with GAC Research Institute. The two parties will jointly develop automatic valet parking technology and install it on GAC mass-produced models to promote the scenario-based application of this technology in China. According to the plan, GAC will try to mass-produce automatic valet parking technology on certain models in the second half of 2020. Starting from 2021, it will try to install the automatic parking function on high-end and top-end models.

In fact, Bosch's automatic valet parking service has far surpassed the prototype stage and is gradually being introduced to the market. It is expected that Bosch will equip more than a dozen parking lots around the world with this service by the end of 2021. In view of this, in addition to cooperating with Daimler and GAC, Bosch is discussing with the ISO Standardization Management Committee to develop a standard for future parking lots so that the parking lots it develops can support AVP systems developed by more companies and ultimately create a public platform.

In addition to automatic valet parking, self-driving taxis used in cities are also a focus of Bosch. In this field, its partner is also Daimler. In July 2018, Bosch and Daimler deepened their cooperation. The two parties will promote the development of L4 fully autonomous driving and L5 driverless cars on urban roads and build the first autonomous driving pilot city in California. According to previous plans, Daimler and Bosch will conduct a pilot project for the cooperation in the second half of this year, and the preferred city is San Jose, California, USA. Now there is only one and a half months left in 2019, and I don’t know how far this cooperation has progressed.

What is the technical strength?

The rapid development of Bosch's autonomous driving business is supported by powerful technology. Unlike many players who only focus on one of the three aspects of autonomous driving perception, thinking, and action, Bosch has layouts in all three areas.

First, in terms of perception, Bosch has launched a radar-based adaptive cruise control system since 2000, and has now established a complete perception technology product line including cameras, millimeter-wave radars, ultrasonic radars, satellite positioning smart sensors, Bosch road features, etc. Among them, the camera has developed to the third generation. The new camera combines a unique multi-path recognition algorithm and artificial intelligence for target recognition, making the results of environmental perception more accurate and reliable. The latest millimeter-wave radar product is the fifth generation. Compared with the fourth generation product, the fifth generation of millimeter-wave radar has greatly improved both detection accuracy and detection distance. The ultrasonic radar is already the sixth generation product.

Particularly worth mentioning are Bosch Satellite Positioning Smart Sensor and Bosch Road Signature, which together constitute Bosch's autonomous driving positioning solution. The Satellite Positioning Smart Sensor uses the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signal, supplemented by data from correction services, angular velocity and wheel speed sensors, to achieve precise positioning of autonomous vehicles during driving.

Bosch road features are generated by cameras and radars equipped on the vehicle to identify environmental features around the road, such as lane lines and traffic lights, and then uploaded to the cloud through the vehicle communication module, and an independent sensor positioning layer is generated, which is finally integrated by the map vendor as part of the high-precision map. The road feature information obtained by the sensors of the autonomous driving vehicle, such as road signs, is compared with the high-precision map positioning layer in real time, so that the vehicle can accurately know its position in the current lane, thereby achieving centimeter-level positioning. Unlike cameras, radars, etc., this product can be used for precise positioning and route planning in all-weather environments.