On March 9, the website of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China announced the recommended national standard for "Automotive Driving Automation Classification", which will be implemented on January 1, 2021.

This standard is based on the degree to which a driving automation system can perform dynamic driving tasks, and divides driving automation into levels 0 to 5 based on the role assignments in performing dynamic driving tasks and the presence or absence of design operating conditions:

Level 0 driving automation (emergency assistance)

The driving automation system cannot continuously perform the lateral or longitudinal motion control of the vehicle in the dynamic driving task but has the ability to continuously perform the detection and response of some targets and events in the dynamic driving task.

Level 1 driving automation (partial driving assistance)

The driving automation system continuously performs vehicle lateral or longitudinal motion control in dynamic driving tasks within its design operating conditions and has the ability to detect and respond to some targets and events that are compatible with the vehicle's lateral or longitudinal motion control.

Level 2 driving automation (combined driving assistance)

The driving automation system continuously performs vehicle lateral and longitudinal motion control in dynamic driving tasks within its designed operating conditions and has the ability to detect and respond to some targets and events that are compatible with the vehicle's lateral and longitudinal motion control.

Level 3 driving automation (conditional autonomous driving)

The driving automation system continuously performs all dynamic driving tasks within its designed operating conditions.

Level 4 driving automation (highly autonomous driving)

The driving automation system continuously performs all dynamic driving tasks and performs dynamic driving task takeovers within its designed operating conditions.

Level 5 driving automation (fully autonomous driving)

The driving automation system continuously performs all dynamic driving tasks and performs dynamic driving task takeover under any drivable conditions.

Prior to this, regarding the intelligent classification of "autonomous driving" of automobiles, the industry has been using the SAE classification standard developed by Americans.

The approval of the "Automotive Driving Automation Classification" means that China will officially have the official autonomous driving classification standard.

Rather, the biggest success of the "Automotive Driving Automation Classification" was approved, which is to promote the mass production of autonomous driving at the national policy level.

At the same time, engineers and technicians can be given a quantifiable index or a possible technical development path guide.

From the relationship between the various elements at different levels, we can see that the Chinese and American standards are basically the same

According to Leifeng.com, "Automotive Driving Automation Classification" has been in pre-research for 3 years since it was launched in 2017. In the process of standard setting, more than ten domestic and foreign enterprises such as BMW, Ford, Volkswagen, Changan, GAC, Geely, and Dongfeng assisted in completing the drafting and formulation of standards.

Based on the degree to which the driving automation system can perform dynamic driving tasks, driving automation is classified into 0-5 levels according to the role assignment in the execution of dynamic driving tasks and the presence or absence of design operating conditions.

Overall, compared with the US classification standards, China's autonomous driving classification is basically the same as the SAE classification.

In the Chinese version, vehicle longitudinal and lateral motion control, target and event detection, and corresponding, dynamic driving tasks are taken over to assess the roles and tasks assumed by drivers and systems.

SAE also clearly states that there are three main players in the driving process of the vehicle: (human) users, driving automation systems, other vehicle systems and components, by referring to the driving automation level of these three main roles, and by performing dynamic driving Task (Dynamic Driving Task, DDT) or withdraw DDT to define.

On the other hand, the two standards for the definition and methods of 0-5 autonomous vehicles are basically the same.

Under the SAE standard, the classification method is distinguished by dynamic driving tasks (DDT), DDT's task support and design operation range.

The dynamic driving task refers to all real-time operations and strategic functions (decision-making behaviors) required for the car to drive on the road and does not include strategic functions such as trip scheduling, destination and route selection.

Vehicle execution includes lateral movement of the vehicle through the steering wheel and control of the vehicle through acceleration and deceleration; perception and judgment (OEDR, Object and event detection and response, also known as peripheral monitoring) is the operation of the vehicle's longitudinal movement direction, Object and event detection, cognitive classification and subsequent response, to monitor and perform corresponding operations on the surrounding environment of the vehicle, the plan of vehicle movement and the transmission of external information.

Comparing SAE's description, the Chinese version of the autonomous driving classification standard is roughly the same as SAE.

It is worth noting that the Chinese version of the grading standard is for level 0 to level 2 autonomous driving, which stipulates that "target and incident detection and response" is jointly completed by the driver and the system.

However, under the SAE standard, OEDR (target and event detection, and decision-making tasks) for L0 to L2 autonomous vehicles are all completed by human drivers.

In short, for the perception and monitoring of the environment, SAE lists only human drivers in the 0-2 level, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has an additional system.

Professionals in the industry said that there is no difference between the two in essence. The SAE version does not indicate that the 0-2 level system does not have the ability to sense and monitor. It is only the responsible person or the human driver, not the autonomous driving system.

It can be clearly seen that the definitions of SAE and "Automotive Driving Automation Classification" at levels 0-5 are basically the same.

From the perspective of the realization path, the rationality of the classification is also the same, because there are divisions that point out "specific areas", which can greatly reduce the technical difficulty of fully automatic driving.

However, there are also some ambiguities in the classification of low-level autonomous driving. In some cases, a car cannot be strictly classified into a specific level.

Under what driving conditions can a car be counted as "autonomous driving"?

According to the current "Automotive Driving Automation Classification" standard, "L3 level" is the lowest level of intelligent classification of "autonomous driving" of cars.

In other words, a car that functionally meets the "L3 level" standard cannot be used in all scenarios without restriction.

Drivers are only allowed to activate the vehicle's automatic driving system under certain specific safe environmental conditions (such as road conditions and vehicle conditions are in compliance with standards), completely abandon human driving, and leave the car to the on-board automation system for control.

Therefore, at present, only the "L3 level" at home and abroad is generally defined as "conditional" autonomous driving.

However, an engineer who has been in the industry for many years told Lei Feng.com that many factors restricting the development of autonomous driving technology, in addition to the gap in scientific and technological strength, have legal and moral constraints.

Therefore, there is still an "insurmountable gap" between the L3 level (conditional autonomous driving) and the L4 level (highly autonomous driving).

The extension of this view is that the current L2.5 concept will gradually spread to most car companies, but because of technical and cost reasons, everyone will not be able to achieve the "actual" L3. This is why some car companies have already achieved L3, but they do not say that they are L2.

That is to say, even at the L3 level, once the system prompts, the driver must immediately take over the steering wheel.

The reality is that more and more technology practitioners are expressing "bad taste" at the practicality of the L3 level.

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