Computer Vision News - March 2018

22 Xiaodi Hou - TuSimple What is the main strength of your company? What are you proud of? The answer to this question will never be an algorithm. I believe that every single algorithm can be reproduced. This is not a barrier at all. What really is the competitive advantage for us is the ability of solving every problem that we have encountered. What makes me really proud is we have actually finished every project. We have solved all of the problems that are in front of us. For example, if we know that the camera is not working well, we have actually built our own camera, because the cameras on the market are not good enough. We try to use the HD map. Those high definition maps are not great enough in quality or they do not provide the map within our area. We have to deal with that. In this fashion, we actually have to do everything ourselves, also because we are dealing with trucks: there is no supplier that could provide a test pattern for trucks. That’s why we said: “Why don’t we just go out and talk to people?” Initially, we talked to Shaanxi Automobile Group, which is a state- owned enterprise of China and a very big truck manufacturer. We negotiated with them and finally we jointly developed trucks with Shaanxi. That was in China, but then those trucks could not be shipped to the US because of the ignition regulations. So we said: “Why don’t we just find another OEM truck manufacturer in the US and work on the same thing again?” It would be the same process. We found Peterbilt and collaborated with them, building trucks together. Whenever we find a problem, we try to use the most direct, most efficient way to solve that problem. By solving that problem, we’re actually not building the specific technology. We’re building the entire ecosystem. Where can these trucks be found on the roads? Our Chinese truck has been test driving in China for a while. In last June, we started doing some test runs. In September, we started a fully autonomous Level 4 autonomous driving in a small city in China. In the US, we started to test things in early January. Both trucks are actually driving now. Guest “The core technology that would finally solve the AGI problem would be used to solve the autonomous driving problem to make sure that the car or truck will co-exist with humans within the human world” Computer Vision News