Looking back at the technology circle at the end of 2023, large models are the focus that cannot be avoided. This technology is considered to be an industrial-revolution-level productivity tool, and all walks of life are paying attention to the production paradigm change that it may bring.
This naturally includes autonomous driving and intelligent driving. Not only because smart cars will be the most promising personal terminals in the next 10 years; Moreover, because the large model provides substantial help for autonomous driving in many technical links such as perception, decision-making, and simulation training.
If the technology returns to the market, the perception of intelligent driving by ordinary consumers is still insufficient. After all, Tesla, which is currently at the forefront of global technology, has promised FSD (Full Self-Driving Function) from 2017 to now. It doesn't sound like it's reliable.
However, when the application scenario is changed from passenger cars to commercial vehicles, and when the actual scenario is converted to closed or semi-open roads such as docks, ports, and mines, some autonomous driving products have been providing services for B-end customers in recent years.
Westwell Technology, founded in Shanghai, is one such company. In the past three years, the Q-Truck, a full-time driverless new energy commercial vehicle developed by this company, has achieved regular mixing with manned trucks at Laem Chabang Port in Thailand, and has safely completed more than 4050,000 TEU (a unit of measurement for container throughput, referring to one 20-foot standard container or equivalent loading capacity) is a real ship operation. Since 2020, Westwell's driverless new energy commercial vehicles, systems and other solutions have landed in many places around the world, including Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico, Malaysia, South Korea, etc., and the global business map is still in continuous expansion.
Westwell Technology's Q-truck and E-truck are mixed at Laem Chabang Port in Thailand(**Westwell).
If we talk about the unmanned products that are generally oriented to the B-end, we try to realize the intelligent and unmanned transportation links in the logistics production scenario. Then, the goal of Xijing Technology is to start from the source of the scene, thoroughly digitize the closed and semi-closed environments such as ports and airports, and then form an intelligent centralized control platform, with a powerful AI algorithm to unify the whole process of scene production. Autonomous driving, on the other hand, can be seen as an important part of this smart ecological transformation, but it is far from the whole story.
Obviously, Westwell Technology's long-term vision is the global market, not limited to China. Repeatedly polishing a set of standardized processes and quickly replicable new energy autonomous driving commercial solutions has also given the gradual practice of Westwell Technology's vision the confidence to implement the technology. At present, Westwell Technology's products and services have landed in 18 countries and regions around the world, serving more than 160 group customers.
Zhang Rong, president of Xijing Technology, believes that the company is currently in a trillion-level global logistics track with containers as the carrier and running through sea, rail, land, air, factories, etc. Focusing on the AINERGY brand strategy, that is, the combination of new intelligence (AI) and new energy (green energy), Xijing will help the global logistics field to achieve more efficient and sustainable value enhancement in the intelligent green evolution. In the face of rapid changes in the global market, today's Xijing also maintains its own intelligent evolution iteration, we have expanded from the initial single scene to more diverse scenarios, and will focus more on expanding the new relationship between people and intelligence in the future, from intelligence to human beings to symbiosis.
In the face of the super large-scale global market space, Westwell Technology also said that it will start from the subtleties and devote itself to every small change, so as to promote the occurrence of greater and more positive changes in the world. In the process of global commercial landing, Westwell will provide more diversified scenarios and full-link value of new energy and intelligent integrated solutions for global large logistics customers. At the same time, it is also necessary to maintain a high degree of coupling and adaptation with the cultural policies, special scenarios, and complex working conditions of different places around the world. The resulting tangible business and green benefits will sustainably empower all participants in the entire value chain in the long run.
But what is so special about Westwell Technology's autonomous driving products that can be truly implemented?
From containers to smart ports, from smart to wise
Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Silicon Alley, Changning, Shanghai, Westwell Technology is committed to providing the world's leading intelligent and new energy integrated solutions for the container logistics industry, focusing on driverless commercial vehicles, systems and overall solutions.
At the beginning, they started from the intelligent identification of the container logistics chain, the intelligent transformation of port machinery, intelligent security and other sectors, and provided port customers with intelligent services such as AI unmanned operation systems, equipment and remote intelligent supervision. In 2016, the Westwell unmanned driving team of Westwell Technology was formally established, and began to deploy unmanned driving, and achieved commercialization in the port scene of large logistics in only 2 years. This further strengthens Westwell Technology's deep cultivation of the unmanned driving track.
In 2018, Westwell Technology officially launched a new species of unmanned driving, the world's first full-time driverless commercial vehicle Q-Truck concept version, and at the same time launched Qomolo, a new energy driverless commercial solution. In 2020, the Q-Truck fleet was commercialized at Hutchison Ports' Laem Chabang Port in Thailand, creating the world's first smart port project with a mix of unmanned and manual driving. Since then, it has successively landed in the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, Mexico and other countries.
In the past two years, the market has moved frequently. In 2022, Westwell Technology released the world's first intelligent battery swap unmanned commercial vehicle, Q-Truck, which only takes 5 minutes to replace the unmanned and efficient battery with the support of the self-developed intelligent energy service PowerOnAir. In 2023, Westwell Technology and Hutchison Port Group signed an order for 100 driverless container trucks Q-Truck in Port Felisdow, UK, to build the largest new energy driverless commercial fleet to date, and deploy PowerOnAir smart energy services.
If we compare autonomous driving technology with robots (which also require perception, calculation, decision-making and other processes), Q-Truck intelligent evolution and iteration is like a whole process of robot innovation and development, deep learning and self-growth, from the past to the future of human-machine symbiosis.
Q-trucks arrived at Laem Chabang Port (Westwell) in Thailand
The first step is to go from a machine to a human.
The core of this step is to equip the machine with a variety of hardware needed to realize autonomous driving, including the Wellseesee industrial-grade ultra-long-range high-precision binocular camera and lidar self-developed by Westwell Technology, and a powerful AI perception software system to perceive and perceive the surrounding environment like eyes.
Attaching eyes is only the first step from a machine to a human, and with the ability to be intelligent, it is also necessary to add computing and decision-making capabilities to the machine.
Translated into the field of autonomous trucks, the actual focus of calculation and decision-making is that you have to know when to go and when to stop on the internal roads of an internal port terminal without a high-definition map, and you must not collide with manned trucks in a mixed work environment. In addition, the special working scenarios of docks and ports have extremely high requirements and difficulties for parking positions. It is understood that Q-Truck can independently achieve precise fine-tuning within 3cm to match the various interactive operation needs of the production process.
Thanks to the multi-road intelligent driving system platform called Q-Pilot independently developed by Nishii, the bulky truck can be transformed from a machine into a robot with the ability to be a single vehicle on the dock.
Westwell Technology's unmanned heavy-duty truck Q-Truck was in normal operation at Laem Chabang Port Project in Thailand (**Westwell Technology).
The second step is to progress from an ordinary person to a top student.
When the intelligent bicycle is realized, it is necessary to further improve the intelligent ability, so that the autonomous driving can be changed from "usable" to "easy to use", and provide real value in the production process.
*Training is an important part of Q-Truck's growth, and it is also the substantial empowerment that large-scale model technology brings to the field of autonomous driving. By generating virtual driving scenarios, large-scale virtual tests are carried out in advance, especially simulating the efficient operation of vehicles in harsh operating environments, extreme weather and other operating scenarios, as well as unlocking the dilemmas in advance, so as to train, debug and verify the autonomous driving system with higher specifications; At the same time, by generating more synthetic knowledge, the model can also augment the real-world experience like a human, and improve the generalization ability of the model to cope with the complexity and changeability of the real world.
Westwell's WellSim vehicle** platform enables Q-Truck to continuously self-experience and deepen its evolution in the virtual world, enabling autonomous driving to replace humans to perform boring and heavy tasks more accurately, efficiently and safely. Under the high-intensity training of WellSim, the actual landing speed of Q-Truck has been accelerated, and it can cope with multiple and complex scenarios with ease.
The last step is to create the best environment for the top students.
When there are autonomous vehicles that can realize intelligence, external cooperation is also needed. This process not only requires the ability of the vehicle, but also needs to make the vehicle more silky and integrated into the whole environment, and produce actual economic benefits in the production process.
The WellFMS vehicle management and dispatching system developed by Westwell Technology will provide Q-Truck with intelligent scheduling and fully automatic path planning for multiple models in the scene to ensure the safety and efficiency of the fleet.
Truck realizes 5-minute "unmanned" high-efficiency battery swap (**Westwell Technology).
With the support of PoweronAir, a self-developed smart energy service developed by Xijing, the latest intelligent battery swapping version of Q-Truck can be swapped and charged, and it only takes 5 minutes to change the battery autonomously throughout the whole process, which is as convenient as refueling. This completely breaks through the pain points of insufficient capacity and range anxiety of commercial vehicles, and the Q-Truck has a cruising range of up to 150km and a load of up to 75 tons, participating in 7*24 hours of unmanned operation.
In practical application scenarios, the fast battery swap will bring two immediate efficiency improvements: first, it can save more time than charging and improve the working frequency of each vehicle; Second, save the labor cost investment in the charging process - as mentioned above, the battery swap on the Q-Truck is completed unmanned and autonomous.
This also verifies that if the Q-Truck is used in the actual production scenario of large logistics, the whole process will not drop the chain. Human, machine, environment and society, the three are not opposed and conflicted, on the contrary, a state of harmony and symbiosis can be found, and only in this balanced state can they empower each other, create and win-win.
From manned to unmanned, we are driving a positive change in AI efficiency
With the support of the above technical capabilities, the Q-Truck has been able to work and is easy to use. However, the application of autonomous driving is not just as simple as solving the problem of engineering mass production. How to make customers perceive that technology can create actual productivity value is a business difficulty for autonomous driving companies.
For commercial customers, especially in a traditional industry such as ports, which has developed with modern globalization, it is not only because the technology is cool enough to use a new technology, but because it can bring substantial benefits. That is: for the large logistics industry, autonomous driving is not an end, but a technical means. Innovation is not achieved overnight, but steadily and steadily.
Westwell Technology's upgradeable self-driving heavy-duty truck E-Truck S1 is involved in operations at Laem Chabang Port in Thailand (Westwell).
In order to match the market demand, Westwell Technology has focused on two optimizations in its products. Its core purpose is to open up the sense of boundary between manned and unmanned as much as possible, from closed scenes to semi-open road connectors, so that the transformation of large logistics enterprises in the production process becomes easier.
The first optimization: the launch of the new e-truck with cockpit design, which is also the world's first intelligent and connected new energy heavy-duty truck that can be upgraded to autonomous driving. Compared to the Q-Truck, which was designed with no cockpit at all, the E-Truck uses the same chassis but with a detachable cockpit that allows companies to switch between manned and unmanned.
Such a design greatly reduces the anxiety of users when purchasing - even if you don't turn on the top skills of completely unmanned for the time being, the smart truck you bought is not a **. This is because the demand for autonomous driving at this stage has been fully met, and the upgrade potential for different phases in the future has been purchased in advance. WhenHowever, when the time is right in the future, it will be able to transform into a fully driverless truck at the fastest speed and lowest cost.
The second optimization is the introduction of the new energy battery swap mode, and the WELLFMS vehicle management and dispatch system can also accurately control energy consumption. It is important to know that in transportation scenarios such as terminals with heavy containers as the main carrier, the energy cost of heavy trucks is not a small amount, but also a source of heavy pollution. This 5-minute intelligent battery swap mode further optimizes the cost and degree of automation in the production process, and also makes an important contribution to green carbon reduction.
The e-truck S1 only takes 5 minutes to replace the battery and replenish the energy (**Westwell).
At Laem Chabang Port in Thailand, the Qomolo new energy autonomous driving global solution built by Xijing has been fully commercialized and formed a normalized business ecological operation. At present, unmanned Q-Truck and manned E-Truck are safely and efficiently mixed with the support of the WellFMS vehicle management and dispatch system. It has been estimated that Q-Truck bicycles can help reduce emissions by 50 tons per year, which is equivalent to planting 4,545 trees.
Like all robots, Xijing's self-developed unmanned vehicles and intelligent systems are enough to replace people to perform part of the work in harsh environments, maintain 7*24 hours of all-weather, all-day high-intensity start-up, and truly become a reliable helper.
AI+Green Energy, focusing on new scenarios for autonomous driving applications
At present, the Westwell Technology Q-Truck fleet has safely completed more than 40 percent in 3 years at Laem Chabang Terminal in Thailand50,000 TEU real ship operation.
Xijing Technology's Qomolo new energy autonomous driving global solution can be quickly deployed and put into production in any port terminal scenario within 7 days. Even zero modification of the physical infrastructure of the user scenario is equivalent to seamless and rapid intervention in the customer scenario.
In other words, the next business layout of Xijing Technology is not only to sell Q-Truck and E-Truck and even autonomous driving capabilities, but also to expect a set of global solutions to be widely used in commercial applications around the world, and at the same time, it can also customize personalized and highly adaptable multi-scenario solutions according to the special needs, policies, and cultures of customers in different territories.
There is no need to make a big move, and some traditional ports can be transformed into highly intelligent ports. This can not only solve the problem of long-term labor shortage, but also speed up the process of intelligent and green and low-carbon ports. Not only in the port terminal, but also in the entire logistics industry, such as railway hubs, airports, factory parks, etc., there are similar pain points, such as high pollution, difficulty in recruiting workers, high operating costs, etc. It is also an important direction for Xijing Technology to focus on the future of Xijing Technology to promote intelligent + new energy in multiple scenarios in the field of large logistics, as well as to open up the efficient flow and green cost reduction of the whole process in the scene.
Xijing Technology told Geek Park that the company has now achieved the coverage of the whole scene of large logistics, focusing on key scenarios, and accelerating the commercial landing of large-scale with standardized products. In the next few years, Westwell will adhere to AINERGY's globalization strategy to accelerate the smart going overseas, provide the world's leading intelligent (AI) + new energy (green energy) integrated solutions for traditional large logistics customers, and will also link more ecological partners of the large logistics chain to intelligently evolve and empower each other.
Digitalization and intelligence are bound to be the direction and trend of the transformation of the traditional logistics industry, and on the basis of matching needs and solving the actual cost reduction and efficiency increase, I believe that more and more companies will be willing to embrace this vision and participate in the actual reform. For the whole society, new energy is the core direction of production mode transformation, and exploring more efficient and clean production methods in the new AI era is also the social responsibility that every enterprise should assume.
Westwell Technology's new energy autonomous driving solution Qomolo was commercially landed at Laem Chabang Port in Thailand (**Westwell Technology).
This means that Westwell Technology's overall smart logistics solution can empower more partners who are trying to transform to new energy and intelligence with sustainable value, and help them complete the intelligent transformation faster and with lower costs.
From multiple perspectives such as technological innovation, business scenarios, and social responsibility, and driven by vision, the industry also needs a leading new force like Westwell Technology to insist on being at the forefront of exploration and innovative development. Not only is it limited to creating a complete set of large-scale logistics solutions, but also has a lot of room for commercial autonomy and unmanned commercial operations.