How does "Little Donkey" become Ali's deep charge in the intelligent war of terminal logistics?

Finding certainty and stability in an uncertain environment is the meaning of new technology. The rapid development of intelligent logistics depends on the continuous empowerment and powerful drive of new technologies. On September 17, the New Yun Qi Conference was held. Combining cutting-edge artificial intelligence and autonomous driving technology, the new role of Ali Zoo-"Little Donkey" has become the most beautiful child in the spotlight.

A new species born with the trend? Little donkey has a big head.

Changes in demand lead to technological innovation, and so does the "story" of Little Man Donkey.

At present, the demand for logistics distribution is exploding. It is predicted that in the near future, China alone will generate 654.38+0 billion delivery orders every day. Terminal logistics is bound to become an important link with the highest cost and lowest efficiency in the whole logistics system, and it is bound to need more reasonable, efficient and advanced solutions.

Ali's solution is a smarter "logistics robot", that is, an intelligent transportation device that provides the last 3 kilometers of distribution service for the terminal logistics scene. Earlier, the International Federation of Robotics predicted that the upcoming robot revolution would create a market of trillions of dollars, and logistics robots obviously have great potential.

Especially in China, the robot market can be roughly divided into three categories: industrial robots, service robots and special robots. Among them, the service robot market has accounted for more than 1/4 of the global market, and it is estimated that the market scale will exceed 4 billion US dollars in 2020. From 20 14 to 20 19, the average growth rate of China robot market reached 20.9%, among which the growth rate of service robots was even higher, and logistics robots were the "important place" for service robots.

However, why logistics robots? This should start with the complexity and particularity of the terminal logistics scene.

In the terminal scene, the road is unstructured, even if it is only driving at low speed, the difficulties faced by the robot are still huge. For example, in community roads, robots need to avoid people, cars, cats and dogs and various obstacles in time, accurately and safely, which means that they should skillfully realize basic operations such as turning, parking, overtaking and reversing. Once the environment exceeds a certain degree of complexity, the robot will judge that all the forward paths are unsafe and "freeze" in place to avoid collision.

It is more difficult to "choose" because robots need to "improvise". For example, on the road where only one car can pass, the robot should "guess" the driver's thoughts in the face of the traffic situation. Any operation it chooses to slow down, pull over and give priority to traffic will affect the robot's next behavior. Even if the driver suddenly accelerates to stop while driving, the robot must have the corresponding adjustment and judgment ability.

It is conceivable that if you are a robot, you will definitely exclaim "I am too difficult!" " "But robots, especially logistics robots, have to face this repetitive but challenging terminal scene all the time. This time, Ali entered the robot war, relying on the core algorithm ability and software and hardware integration design ability of Ali Dharma Institute, which helped the logistics robot realize humanoid intelligence.

According to reports, in recent years, the exploration of multi-modal artificial intelligence technology and autonomous driving technology by Ali Dharma Institute and the whole Ali economy has provided a profound technical foundation for the research and development of robots. At present, Xiaomanlu Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. has been registered to promote robot research and development and mass production. Xiaoman Donkey, who is responsible for the mission, is the first logistics robot released by Xiaoman Donkey, and will take the lead in putting it into use on a large scale in the rookie station.

Of course, in addition to the Xiao Lv wheel robot, Ali Dharma Institute also launched an intelligent robot platform. The platform will develop different types of robot products, such as biped robots and crawler robots, for fire fighting and disaster relief, epidemic prevention and disinfection, airport services, scenic spots and public security patrols. The platform is open to the outside world, and users can quickly develop robots in different scenes on this platform.

A little donkey with all the skills? A bright future.

It is not surprising that Ali entered the robot track because of the needs of society, the needs of scenes and the accumulation of technology, but it is somewhat unexpected to name his first logistics robot Little Man Donkey.

As we all know, donkeys used to be the most commonly used tools for labor, transportation, fairs and goods transportation. Logistics robots can be as warm, reliable and human as donkeys, and have the "brute force" that tasks must achieve, which Ali expected.

As a result, in today's increasingly cloud-based and digital production and life, the "little donkey" of full-time terminal logistics service was born as a fair tool in the digital primitive era. In Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai dialects, "man" is often used as an adverb of degree. This little donkey, born in Zhejiang, will be quite smart, capable and safe.

When it comes to the shape of the donkey, the budding state behind the sense of science and technology is impressive. Its size is 2 100*900* 1200mm (plus the height of the laser radar is 1445mm). The appearance of the car body adopts champagne black gold tone, and the lines are round. The compartment can be customized freely. According to the calculation that each car can load up to 50 pieces of express/package/take-out with normal size and deliver 10 times a day, the peak capacity can reach 500 pieces/day.

In the field of terminal logistics, which pursues high efficiency and energy saving, the speed of Xiaoman donkey is more concerned with safety requirements, and the average speed is set at15 km/h; It uses a pull-out rechargeable battery, charging 4 degrees each time, cruising range 102 km, and driving 100 km consumes less electricity than eating hot pot for two hours. The power is 6 15w, which is less than half of Dyson blower (1600w) and one-third of conventional induction cooker (about 2000w).

It is no exaggeration to say that in the increasingly fierce competition in the logistics robot market, Xiaoman Donkey has his own real kung fu. What is emphasized here is that it has industry-leading competitiveness in three aspects: intelligence, safety and mass production.

As mentioned above, the robot should be intelligent enough to have cognitive decision-making ability similar to that of human beings: the little donkey can drive freely in complex terminal scenes, avoid obstacles smoothly, handle turning, emergency stop, overtaking and reversing smoothly, and the automatic driving rate is as high as 99.9999%; It only takes 0.0 1 second to identify the intentions of hundreds of pedestrians and vehicles; When an emergency stop is needed in case of danger, the brain only needs 0. 1s to complete decision-making, planning and issuing control instructions.

The little donkey is very safe, and the system architecture introduces five redundant designs, including brain decision-making, redundant cerebellum, abnormal detection brake, contact protection brake and remote protection. For example: safe cerebellar system, focusing on passive safety; The remote driving system is responsible for controlling the robot through human intervention under certain circumstances (beyond the boundary of the robot's cognitive ability).

In addition, through algorithm self-research and deep customization, Xiaoman Donkey has the ability of mass production. This is due to the effective reduction of manufacturing costs, which is embodied in: independent design of appearance and possession of design patents; Deep customization of core main sensors such as chassis and lidar; The self-developed embedded computing platform customizes high-performance, low-cost and low-power computing units through the combination of software and hardware.

In a word, Xiaoman Donkey integrates various core technology modules such as autonomous driving, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, cloud computing, etc. It relies on computer vision, 5G, terminal pace, automatic driving, machine learning and other technologies, and is close to large-scale mature applications.

The industry believes that the development of automated mobile robots has passed the bubble period; The automatic mobile robot represented by Xiaoman Donkey is expected to replace the existing tools and schemes in related fields on a large scale in 5- 10 years.

Conclusion:

Nowadays, the value of intelligent logistics to the logistics industry and even the whole economic and social operation is gradually improving, and the market scale is also expanding. China is regarded as the biggest "battlefield" for logistics robots in the future. Ali is not the first to enter, and the latecomers will follow.

As a deep charge in the field of Ali robots, Xiaoman Donkey is undoubtedly determined to win. However, in the era of the birth of man-machine, although the demand for robots in society is facing a big explosion, it is necessary for Ali to continuously lay out and overweight robots, the crown jewel of manufacturing.

(logistics commercial vehicle network? Reporter? Rong Xiao)

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.