Chinese autonomous driving startup Pony.ai recently announced that it has been granted the first self-driving truck testing license by the city of Guangzhou to conduct open-road testing.
Pony.ai's self-driving truck technology has completed a number of complex scenarios including traffic signal recognition and response, avoidance, following, merging, overtaking, emergency parking, and intersection and roundabout passage.
The actual road test will accelerate the development and verification of self-driving truck technology and promote the application of Pony.ai's self-driving technology in the logistics field and landing attempts.
Pony.ai is currently working on self-driving truck technology development in China and the US at the same time.
In April 2019, Pony.ai announced for the first time the progress of self-driving truck R&D and demonstrated for the first time the self-driving software and hardware system developed for heavy trucks at the 3rd China International Import Expo in November this year, which can realize L4 level self-driving.
Pony.ai is an autonomous driving startup founded in December 2016 by Peng Jun and Lou Tiancheng in the Bay Area, California, to develop L4/L5 level autonomous driving technology.
Pony.ai established R&D centers in Beijing and Guangzhou in 2017 and relocated its China headquarters to Guangzhou's Nansha District.
Since its establishment at the end of 2016, Pony.ai's technology goal has been to create "virtual drivers" for all types of vehicles and scenarios, with a focus on two major application areas: travel and transportation.
For passenger cars, Pony.ai has landed a fleet of regular tests and operations in both China and the United States and has completed more than 3.5 million kilometers of autonomous driving tests on public roads as of October.
The key technologies of self-driving passenger cars and trucks have a high commonality and can mutually facilitate each other technically, which provides the basis for Pony.ai to develop self-driving trucks.
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