On March 25th, the 8th China Electric Vehicle Festival Forum 2022 “Cloud Forum” officially kicked off in Beijing. On the first day of the conference, the Dual Intelligence Forum with the theme of “Promoting the Coordinated Development of Smart Cars and Smart Cities” was launched, and Mr. Zhao Yue, Secretary and Chairman of China Unicom Smart Connection Technology Co., Ltd., shared some exploration and practice related to the construction of innovative services for 5G digital information infrastructure from the perspective of communication operators and professional service providers.
As a new generation of communication technology, 5G technology embodies people’s yearning for large bandwidth, low latency and broad connectivity. The rapid development of 5G technology has broken through the limitations of information transmission. The country has also included 5G construction within the scope of new infrastructure, relying on the integration of 5G and digital technology to create a solid digital information infrastructure for the innovation and development of the entire digital economy.
The important scenario for intelligent connected vehicles is still urban travel, and the upgrading of the digital information infrastructure for urban transportation is urgently needed. The collaborative service of human-vehicle-road-cloud is also an important direction for urban development. The development of both dual intelligence and collaborative development is actually based on the large foundation of digital information technology infrastructure. The fusion of 5G and digital technology provides important support for the integration of emerging technologies.
In recent years, China Unicom has accelerated its pace of comprehensive digital transformation and has achieved some leading results in 5G user services, IoT operations, big data technology innovation, and national key event security guarantee. In particular, in the process of big data development over the past decade, China Unicom has differentiated core capabilities in data governance, analysis, and modeling at the PB level. Especially in the process of the nationwide fight against the epidemic, we have also been recognized by the corresponding central authorities.
For the vertical industry of intelligent connected vehicles, China Unicom established Unicom Smart Connection Technology Co., Ltd. in 2015, mainly relying on China Unicom’s basic resources, focusing on vertical fields, exploring information services, especially in the field of connected cars and vehicle-road collaboration.
Smart Web Technology has established cooperation with 82 car manufacturers in the connected car market, and its market share in front-end connections exceeds 70%. It has also carried out pilot work on vehicle-road collaboration in 26 locations across the country.
In the field of smart city construction, China Unicom has released “CityNEXT”, a comprehensive city governance service with all elements and full synergy from the top-level design, as well as corresponding capabilities and solutions for related applications.
Zhao Yue introduced that the concept of Smart Web Technology is “one foundation, two engines, six capabilities, and N applications”. It mainly relies on China Unicom’s cloud-network integration, smart city capabilities as the foundation, and realizes the fusion of vehicle-road collaboration, business and network engines, as well as related technologies such as high-precision maps, high-precision positioning, unified security authentication, fusion perception, network quality management, and network capability invocation, to meet the service system calls of multiple scenarios.Currently, Zhinet Technology has provided online services for over 40 million vehicles, with a complete localized operational support system covering more than 300 local operation networks. At the same time, Zhinet Technology has extensive experience in top-level design for smart cities and has accumulated experience in over 70 cities and more than 660 projects.
For connected services, China Unicom provides a private network service for autonomous driving with end-to-end connectivity of terminal-network-cloud. It achieves the connection among people, vehicles, and roads on the terminal side, and the integration of 5G, V2X, and high-precision positioning on the network side. According to the business needs of autonomous vehicles, it provides end-to-end exclusive Car-to-X network slice services with different SLAs, enhances the business experience through customized QoS guarantee, and achieves scheduling and management of different latency and edge clouds based on the perception of the driving environment by realizing dynamic adjustment and optimization of network resources.
Zhao Yue gave two examples. The first one is the “5G private network+industry platform” in Tianjin, which realizes the full-scenario management of the demonstration area, supports all-scenario perception from a panoramic view, inside the car, and roadside, supports full-online monitoring and management of V2X event coordination, and satisfies independent management and application innovation for multiple users and tenants.
The second example is the commercial closed-loop case for the entire travel service process in the Shougang Park during this year’s Winter Olympics, which was jointly created by China Unicom and autonomous driving companies. The commercial closed loop actually refers to the full-process business realization from pre-travel to during travel, and to post-travel. Before the trip, it provides mobile phone booking services and travel information push; during the trip, it provides V2V/V2I/V2N information services to achieve safe driving and efficient communication; after the trip, it provides parking guidance and 5G autonomous valet parking services. It provides “5G cloud driving” throughout the entire journey, enabling safe takeover and full-system monitoring services anytime and anywhere.
Zhao Yue summarized that the collaborative development of dual-intelligence requires active participation, joint investment, experience sharing, and mode negotiation from all aspects of the industry, especially in the future business model. China Unicom, especially its Zhinet Technology company, will undertake services in this field based on the ability of 5G’s digital information infrastructure, and contribute to a good ecosystem, promote cross-industry collaborative development, and create more successful business cases for dual intelligence.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.