Editor's note
What does the future look like?
You may be able to find a reference on the scene collection of the future city of Xiong'an.
From May 27th to June 26th, hundreds of domestic enterprises and science and technology innovation teams participated in the finals of 25 subdivisions of 9 competitions in scenarios such as Beidou technology application and next-generation network technology (IPv6) with advanced technology and innovative ideas.
"Gathering Future Technology, Gathering Future Industries, and Building Future Scenes" is the theme of Xiong'an Future City Scene Collection. Scenarios are also applications, and many scenarios such as underground space navigation, plant factories, and zero-carbon buildings have been applied in Xiong'an.
How are these future-related scenarios developed, and what can they bring to the future? This newspaper has launched a series of reports on "Visiting the Future City of Xiong'an" to find answers for readers.
■ Reading prompts
Massive underground parking lots, looking for parking spaces to find crashes. I finally parked the car, and when I came back from shopping, I couldn't find the car again. Get in the car and get out of the underground parking lot, but you don't know which exit is closest to your next destination.
The larger the underground space, the more urgent the need for this. However, due to factors such as the obstruction of underground space buildings, the navigation system on the ground has been moved to the underground space, and it is not easy to use.
In the finals of the Xiong'an Underground Space Safety Emergency Technology Application Competition, "Beidou + Indoor Underground Space Navigation" won the championship of the ultra-large-scale underground space positioning and navigation technology track.
The reporter followed the R&D team's road test vehicle to experience that this system is like an eye installed in the underground space, which can accurately locate the navigation and positioning to the parking space level.
We caught up with the R&D team to find out how the technology came to be.
There are "eyes" in the underground space
On May 22, Lu Zhaoming, vice president of Xiong'an Aerospace Information Research Institute, was explaining the application of "Beidou + Indoor Underground Space Navigation". Photo by Hebei Daily reporter Bai Yun
One lap, two laps...... In the brightly lit underground parking lot of Rongdong District, Xiong'an New Area, it turned to the fifth circle, but the reporter and his colleagues still did not find their destination.
The performance of common navigation in underground space is not satisfactory. This is because due to the impact of building occlusion, the signal will be attenuated or even blocked underground, and the accuracy of navigation will be greatly reduced.
Although the huge underground parking lot is also hung with various signs, it is indeed a bit large to not be able to hold this space, and it is easy to get lost in the underground passage. I repeatedly made a U-turn and passed by buildings 2 and 3 in the target community, but I couldn't find Building 1. In desperation, the reporter could only go to the ground from Building 2 and go around to Building 1 from the ground.
How big is the underground space here?
The underground parking lot of Shijiazhuang Lerthai Center has 160,000 square meters and 2,600 parking spaces. The underground space of the 95 communities in the Rongdong area of Xiong'an New Area is basically interconnected, with more than 4 million square meters and about 50,000 parking spaces.
Most people have encountered the dilemma of not finding a parking space in the underground space and not being able to find a car after parking.
However, the "Beidou + Indoor Underground Space Navigation" section, which will be launched on the "Xiong'an Xing" App, will solve this problem.
Is there really such a god in underground navigation?
On June 15, the reporter followed the R&D team of Xiong'an Aerospace Information Research Institute to conduct a road test.
The road test vehicle is an ordinary business vehicle, which stops after driving to the south gate of Qitai Garden in Xiong'an New District. Chu Xinghe, a postdoctoral fellow at the Xiong'an Aerospace Information Research Institute, clicked on a test app called "Beijing Post Indoor Positioning" on his mobile phone and asked the reporter to randomly select a destination.
The reporter entered the Nanwenying community canteen, and the navigation quickly planned a route accordingly.
The navigation on the ground does not look much different from the commonly used navigation software, but when the car enters the entrance of the underground parking lot, the navigation interface also changes - from the ground building as a reference to the parking space number and building unit.
The accuracy of underground navigation is higher than the journalists imagined. When a turn is about to be made, the navigation will give you an accurate indication a few meters in advance. The road test car passed through rows of parking spaces, and the navigation interface synchronously displayed the parking space markings on both sides of the channel.
"The destination is nearby." The navigation announces that the underground space part ends here, but there is still some distance to the end. The navigation continued to guide the tester from the parking space to the nearest elevator hall, and after reaching the ground, he was guided by the walking route, and it was not long before the signboard of the cafeteria came into view.
This is also another feature of "Beidou + indoor underground space navigation" - integrated positioning and navigation above ground and underground.
A few kilometers away at the Xiong'an Aerospace Information Research Institute, team leader Lu Zhaoming, who is also a professor at the School of Information and Communication Engineering of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, stood in front of the underground Beidou space-time information platform, staring at the trajectory of the road test vehicle on the screen.
"Every time I take a road test, I'm looking for bugs." Lu Zhaoming said that this is what their team has been doing repeatedly in the past four years - research and development, road testing, finding bugs, fixing bugs, re-R&D, and then road testing......
Among the latest enhancements, navigation helps car owners find the nearest underground space to charge a parking space. There are about 700 charging piles in the Rongdong area, and it is difficult for car owners who are not familiar with the underground space to accurately find charging spaces from tens of thousands of parking spaces.
Chu Xinghe enters the charging pile in the destination column, and the navigation quickly gives a nearest route. The road test vehicle followed the navigation and turned left and right in the dense parking spaces, and stopped in front of the nearest C075 charging space.
"At present, the accuracy of underground space navigation can reach the parking space level, about 2-3 meters." Lu Zhaoming said that this is equivalent to installing a pair of sharp eyes in the underground space.
When the needs of application scenarios drive scientific research and development
On January 26, members of the R&D team of Xiong'an Aerospace Information Research Institute tested the navigation system in the underground space of Xiong'an New Area. Photo courtesy of Lu Zhaoming
There has always been a demand for underground space navigation, why was it first developed in Xiong'an New Area?
"It is the research and development driven by the super-large-scale underground scene in Xiong'an New Area." On June 14, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Lu Zhaoming took reporters to the conference room on the 6th floor of Teaching Building 3, answering questions as he walked.
Xiong'an New Area is the first city in China to develop and utilize underground space on a large scale, with 380 kilometers of underground comprehensive pipe gallery and more than 22 million square meters of underground parking lot.
The huge underground space in the new area magnifies the contradiction between the inaccurate underground navigation and the needs of people.
"When the Rongdong area is about to be delivered, because there is no corresponding reference, the underground construction workers often can't find the exit." Lu Zhaoming recalled.
In 2020, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and China Tower Co., Ltd. formed a joint R&D team.
This is not the first time that the need for underground space navigation has arisen, but it has never been as concentrated and urgent as in the new area.
So why does the commonly used navigation fail in the underground space?
Navigation is based on satellite positioning, the principle of which is to determine the distance between the satellite and the receiver through Beidou or GPS satellites, lock the location of the receiver and guide the route.
When you come to the underground space, because of the obstruction of the building, the solutions that can be used on the ground will not work underground.
Previously, there were also some exploration options for underground space navigation. However, these solutions are either expensive, cannot solve O&M, or cannot be applied on mobile phones.
"Underground space navigation should be technologically new, inexpensive, and sustainable." Lu Zhaoming said. The reason why this problem was handed over to Lu Zhaoming's team is that they have been studying the use of wireless signals for perception and positioning, especially in the field of 4G/5G, they have accumulated a lot of experience.
Therefore, when they first came into contact with this topic in 2020, they wanted to use the existing 4G/5G signals to locate people and vehicles in the underground space. "It soon became clear that the road was not working." Lu Zhaoming said that most of the 4G/5G in underground space is covered by passive indoor subsystems, and the signals from different antennas are transmitted in a combined channel, resulting in the inability to distinguish the source of the signal, and therefore the inability to locate it.
Is it possible to introduce Beidou satellite signals that are good at positioning into underground space?
The antenna installed on the top of the cell smoothly introduces the Beidou signal into the ground, but this signal has to be integrated into the original 5G indoor distribution system, which will interfere with the original 4G/5G signal of telecom operators.
The R&D team added a sub-positioning unit of the Beidou room in the underground space, and developed a new set of filtering algorithms to enhance the Beidou signal while making it and other signals relatively balanced.
With the positioning signal in hand, the next step is how to align it.
The positioning accuracy of the Beidou signal on the ground is about 10 meters. However, in the underground space, there may be several rows of parking spaces within a 10-meter radius. "How to achieve the positioning accuracy at the parking space level has troubled us for more than a year." Lu Zhaoming said.
After repeatedly trying hundreds of algorithms, they creatively proposed the "5G + Beidou Combined Positioning Algorithm". Positioning relies on a wide variety of observational measurements, and the more observations you have, the more accurate you are. "For example, if a person is standing in the middle of a mountain, the position of the person observed on each mountain is different. Compared with 10 individual observations, it is certain that the more observation points, the higher the accuracy of the observed position. Lu Zhaoming said that in the same way, the new algorithm will fuse Beidou satellite signals, 5G signals and other multi-source location observation information together to calculate the more accurate location of people or vehicles.
Positioning, but also cost issues.
On June 15th, in the underground space of Rongdong area, if you look up, you will find that there are many lines laid on the top, and there are two white "mushroom heads" every 15-30 meters, also known as indoor equipment.
"The indoor antenna, the combiner in the computer room, the 5G RRU, etc., are all pre-existent. Our new equipment is only the Beidou room sub-positioning unit. Chu Xinghe said. This equipment is installed every 8,000-10,000 square meters, which can achieve accurate positioning of underground space, saving more than 50% of the cost compared with the previous plan.
At this point in the research and development work, there is a digital map of underground space between Lu Zhaoming's team and the positioning and navigation of underground space.
"It's probably the easiest part of the whole development process." Lu Zhaoming said that they added digital maps to the navigation system, and these "eyes" can finally see the underground space of the new area clearly.
Let scientific research have vitality
On June 15, in the underground space of Rongdong District, Xiong'an New Area, the staff of Xiong'an Aerospace Information Research Institute was conducting a road test. Photo by Hebei Daily reporter Bai Yun
On June 26, Fu Bin was studying the application scenario of "Beidou + indoor underground space navigation" at the Xiong'an Aerospace Information Research Institute.
In the team, Fu Bin is responsible for industry promotion and model exploration, such as online car-hailing directly to the unit entrance of the passenger's home, car owners using navigation to find a car in reverse, such as how to negotiate operation with navigation platforms, and cooperation with merchants.
This is also a unique part of Lu Zhaoming's team in the scientific research process.
In the past, the R&D teams of colleges and universities focused on technological innovation and product research and development, and were not good at industrialization, promotion and application.
Is it the lack of money for the R&D team to engage in industrialization promotion?
As early as 2022, in the special project of "Transportation Infrastructure" of the National Key R&D Program, the School of Information and Communication Engineering of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications became the leading unit of the project of "Demonstration Application of Digital Construction of Transportation Facilities in Xiong'an New Area", and obtained a scientific research fund for the research of "5G + Beidou Underground Space Combined Positioning and Navigation".
In 2023, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Xiong'an New Area, and Hebei Communications Investment Group will jointly establish the Xiong'an Aerospace Information Research Institute. The institute has 50 million yuan of financial support for scientific research every year.
"These funds solve the team's worries, and everyone can devote themselves to R&D. In order to achieve the 'four aspects' of scientific and technological innovation, the value of R&D results in universities needs to be realized in application, so we think a little further than R&D itself. Lu Zhaoming said that the demand-driven scientific research results will be better transformed and applied.
Taking application platforms such as food ordering and shopping as examples, there are many application scenarios and profit models, which can promote the continuous optimization of the platform, and also improve user stickiness and form a positive cycle.
"If our R&D results are not promoted and not profitable, serving a small-scale user group, who will undertake the work of map updates and software maintenance in the future?" Lu Zhaoming said that scientific research achievements should also form a closed loop of achievement transformation, so that scientific research projects can be more vigorous.
Continuous updating is the Internet thinking. A one-shot deal is project thinking.
For the "Beidou + Indoor Underground Space Navigation" will soon be launched in "Xiong'an Xing", Wang Shaoqian, deputy general manager of China Xiong'an Group Transportation Co., Ltd., is looking forward to it. Since last year, he has also made some suggestions for navigation, including page design and the system to be smaller and more functional.
"The product is the carrier of R&D results. This R&D achievement was launched on the 'Xiong'an Xing', which is based on user needs, not scientific research. Wang Shaoqian said that solving the navigation problem is only the primary exploration of this scientific research achievement, and grasping other pain points of users in the application of underground space, such as charging and payment, will form a more detailed logical closed loop.
On this point, Lu Zhaoming's team already has some "imagination". They are ready to connect to the charging platform in the navigation system, and the owner can make an appointment from the navigation system and lock the charging pile within a limited time, so as to realize one-click navigation and arrive at the destination. They also prepare and manage the docking of property companies for underground parking to achieve the integration of navigation and settlement. The overall aim is to make navigation more useful.
Extending more scene applications from scientific research is another thing that Xiong'an Aerospace Information Research Institute is trying to explore. They have also combined a new navigation and positioning "artifact".
The high-precision positioning of Beidou + UWB underground pipe gallery can provide navigation for drones or robots that inspect various underground pipe corridors, and the accuracy can reach the centimeter level. At present, this navigation positioning has been applied in Shandong electric power system.
In the low-altitude airspace of 0-3000 meters, they also worked with their partners to develop navigation and positioning chips with centimeter-level accuracy. This research can provide high-precision positioning for drones and other countries.
Lu Zhaoming said that based on Beidou, they are using various solutions to achieve various +, supporting the integration of air, space and ground, indoor and outdoor seamless application scenarios, so that scientific research can serve people's production and life more. (Hebei Daily reporter Bai Yun)
■ Reporter's notes
The distance between an idea and an application
Asked what is the most difficult thing about developing "Beidou + indoor underground space navigation"?
Lu Zhaoming blurted out: "It's idea." ”
The problem is there, how to solve it, it needs a creative idea and strong technical support to achieve.
In the research and development of this project, the creative idea is not to introduce the Beidou signal into the underground, but how to introduce it underground.
The ceiling on the 6th floor of the No. 3 Teaching Building of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications is different from other floors, and it is densely packed with various lines. Even on the wall of the conference room, Lu Zhaoming dragged out a test line with a casual pull.
The Beidou signal went through a wave of attenuation from the satellite to the ground, and then from the roof of the nearly 100-meter-high building along the closed weak current well to the underground, and experienced a second wave of attenuation. How to amplify this signal and let it play its due role in positioning and navigation is here through trial and error.
With the test results, Lu Zhaoming and his students went to the underground of Xiong'an New Area many times to carry out on-site tests. At the end of the summer of 2021, Lu Zhaoming went to the new area for the first time to conduct on-site testing, and the underground space is still under construction. They opened the trunk of the car as a small table, bought two pancakes and a few bottles of mineral water at eight or nine o'clock in the morning and brought them down, and came out at ninety o'clock in the evening.
In those years, Beijing's teaching, experiments and tests in the Xiong'an New Area allowed Lu Zhaoming to live a life in two cities.
The logic of operation that can be explained clearly in a report now is the result of countless experiments and countless tests by scientific researchers in those years.
Before there was no scientific research funding, Lu Zhaoming took students to post money and take time.
Asked what sustains him?
Lu Zhaoming thought for a while and replied: "It's a sense of achievement." ”
His sense of accomplishment comes from two things. First of all, he judged that the integrated technology of communication and navigation (communication and navigation) has a good prospect in solving the navigation and positioning of underground space. At the same time, they are exploring the no-man's land in this field, and the technical solutions they propose are innovative and unique, and they will have a strong desire to create.
Secondly, the problem and demand of underground space must be solved sooner or later. When the problem came to him, he had a sense of mission: "I want to solve it." ”
"Original innovation requires more than just funding and research. Being able to play a modest role in the construction of Xiong'an New Area is a particularly valuable and meaningful thing from the perspective of innovation, which is the biggest driving force. Lu Zhaoming said.
After three or four years of perseverance and struggle, the style of work has turned into a light cloud.
Before the end of the interview, Lu Zhaoming took the reporter to visit the laboratory of the School of Information and Communication Engineering of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. There are many signs hanging at the door of the laboratory: Beijing Laboratory of Advanced Information Network, Open Source 5G Joint Laboratory, etc. The lab was very quiet, and the students were glued to the data running on the screen, so focused that no one looked back at who was coming in.
The curves and numbers on the screen, the journalist is completely incomprehensible. But seeing so many young people immersed in studying specific problems and solving specific applications, I felt an inexplicable sense of steadfastness in my heart.
Text/Hebei Daily reporter Bai Yun
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