Reporting by XinZhiyuan
Editor: Yuan Xie
In early March 2022, Xiaoma Zhixing had just finished raising funds in China, and the United States was required to recall the automatic driving system (ADS) software, becoming the world's first L4 automatic driving system to be so required.
In recent years, the publicity offensive and business achievements of China's "new car-making forces" in the intelligent driving industry have all been soaring and not losing to the head enterprises of their American counterparts.
However, in March 2022, China's driverless car companies set a record for the world's first in negative news:
Part of the software of Xiaoma Zhixing's Autonomous Driving System (ADS) was recalled by the US regulator, which is the world's first regulatory recall of the L4 autonomous driving system.
NHTSA asked Pony Toh to recall ads
According to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA), self-driving car startup Chi Heng will recall some versions of its self-driving system software (ADS) and three experimental vehicles due to a car accident during a road test in California in October 2021.
The agency said it was the first recall requirement in the world initiated by a regulator to an L4 level fully autonomous driving system that was fully handed over to AI.
In an official statement, NHTSA's deputy director said: "Whether the vehicle is operated by a human driver or an AI driving system, the need to protect road users is the same. As the first recall is about, NHTSA will ensure that automakers and developers put road safety first while introducing the latest technology."
The official description of the source accident by Pony Chi Heng is:
On October 28, 2021, during the testing of a pony chi-walk completely unmanned test vehicle in Fremont, California, USA, it drove on the separation belt in the middle of the road when changing lanes, and there was a slight collision with the road sign in the middle of the road. No persons were injured and no other vehicles were involved.
Immediately after the accident, Pony Zhixing suspended the unmanned test of autonomous driving in California and conducted a comprehensive review of the incident. Since the collision, it has been fully cooperating with NHTSA's inquiries.
In ideal road conditions, a fully autonomous smart car without safety personnel suddenly crashes
The driverless vehicle drove onto the barrier in the middle of the road when changing lanes and collided with the sign on it. Road test accidents of this magnitude are actually the norm in the news about the smart car industry.
And only the front of Pony Zhixing's test vehicle was damaged, causing no casualties. This kind of unmanned car driving on the road teeth on its own, compared to the 2018 Uber unmanned car road test accident caused by the car destruction and death of the big scene, can only be regarded as a small dish.
Why did Pony Zhixing become the world's first recall this time? The reason may lie in the word "self".
The Pony Zhixing's experimental vehicle was operated in full automatic driving mode (ADS), and its L4 experimental vehicle was completely equipped with any human safety officers to prepare for takeover.
And the road conditions at that time, according to the official release of the California DMV, the weather was clear and the roads were relatively dry at the time of the accident, and there were no other vehicles and sudden road conditions to interfere.
In this ideal road condition, AI also suddenly opened on the road teeth, it is worth thinking. Other manufacturers' smart cars have similar accidents, good weather impact sensors and AI interpretation, other vehicles on the road to plug lanes to grab the line to interfere with AI, etc. Premise, Xiaoma Zhixing this accident can not find these reasons.
Aerial view of the accident scene at the time
So NHTSA told Pony Zhixing that it believes that there are safety defects in Xiaoma Zhixing's self-driving software and asks for a recall.
According to Pony Chi Heng, a software problem in the crashed vehicle was also found in two other road test vehicles, all three of which have been repaired. Pony Chi Heng also said that it has updated its software code.
In view of the fact that the unmanned test vehicles of Xiaoma Zhixing are only used for in-house research and development, they completed the NHTSA requirements as required on the second day of the accident. At present, the company has responded to all NHTSA inquiries, and there will be no new inquiries from NHTSA after mid-December 2021.
On March 3, 2022, Pony Chi Heng submitted a recall report to NHTSA. On March 7, NHTSA confirmed The Pony's recall.
According to a company spokesperson in an interview, this is the first and only time such an incident has occurred in a self-driving car of Xiaoma Zhixing.
The spokesman said the Pony Chi Heng experimental team has completed more than 6 million miles of real-world driving total, of which 305617 miles will be completed in California in 2021.
Cause of the accident: The program code is buggy
On the NHTSA website, there is a recall safety report submitted by Xiaoma Zhixing, which analyzes the test car crash that occurred in California on October 28, 2021, and briefly describes the cause of the accident, software defects and recall plans.
In the faulty version of Pony's Automated Driving System (ADS) software, the code for the diagnostic function of vehicle geolocation may, in rare cases, incorrectly identify small floating-point rounding errors/differences.
Therefore, a specific diagnostic matching function in AI software may incorrectly round insignificant floating-point numbers within the program as a geographic error in the vehicle.
At the time of the accident, Pony's autopilot was running a geolocation diagnostic check, and due to a "very rare combination of factors and conditions at the time", the program produced a floating-point rounding difference, which the diagnostic test misjudged as a geographic mismatch between the vehicle. This error causes the diagnostic check feature to forcibly shut down ADS. This closure led to the occurrence of impact accidents.
Considering that the wind and sun were beautiful, the road was dry, and the road conditions were empty, it was ideal to look like a professional test racing track, which can also be regarded as "very rare", so that the AI has a bug to the point of nerves driving on the road and bumping teeth. No wonder NHTSA wants to take the pony Zhixing to open this first knife.
Social background: U.S. regulators tighten controls in response to public opinion
As a result of the accident, the California Traffic Management Authority (DMV) revoked Pony's Driverless Testing Permit in the winter of 2021.
This list of licenses originally included eight manufacturers, all of which are the first-class manufacturers in the industry. Chinese and American companies are equally divided among them: China's Pony Zhixing, Wenyuan Zhixing, AutoX, Baidu Apollo, and The United States' Waymo, Cruise, Zoox, Nuro.
These companies could have let unmanned vehicles on California roads be tested on the road without safety officers in the main driver's seat, and the accident of Pony Zhixing was immediately removed from the list.
And this accident coincided with the gradual tightening of unmanned vehicle road test supervision in the United States.
Both the technology industry and the general public in the United States are angry at the previous situation that intelligent unmanned vehicle companies are almost unregulated. Coupled with Musk's automatic eye-catching drama essence attribute, this industry is the target of everyone as long as there is an accident.
The authoritative scientific and technological journal "Electronic Engineering Album" issued a special article in 2021, denouncing the twelve major crimes of intelligent unmanned vehicle enterprises, repeatedly saying that unscrupulous engineers and manufacturers regard public roads as private experimental fields and the public as test mice, but they are almost not subject to substantive control.
Waymo's small-scale Robotaxi pilot in Phoenix, Arizona, is said to have been throwing stones at self-driving test vehicles, believing that these things make the road conditions very dangerous.
At the end of June 2021, NHTSA issued new regulations requiring all manufacturers of assisted driving and autonomous driving above L2 to provide a report within one day of the accident and update the accident report within 10 days. It's clear that the relaxed environment that used to be tested on driverless cars is gone.
Pony Chi Heng has just finished its Series D financing
In March 2022, Pony Chi Heng had just completed its Series D funding round, and its valuation had soared to $8.5 billion.
Pony plans to use the funds to scale up the business, further increase hiring, and build more strategic partnerships. It also plans to increase investment in research and development, including global testing of its fleet of self-driving taxis and robotic trucks, and approach the large-scale commercial landing of its fleet.
So far, the company has not disclosed details of the amount raised, but plans to release the total amount at the end of the full round.
Just after the financing of this kind of news, it is really not very festive.
Resources:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/08/pony-ai-to-issue-recall-of-autonomous-driving-software/
https://www.therobotreport.com/pony-ai-agrees-to-recall-3-of-its-autonomous-vehicles/
https://datahub.transportation.gov/dataset/NHTSA-Recalls-by-Manufacturer/mu99-t4jn