A self-driving truck made by PonyTron slowly drove out of a garage and smoothly entered the Beijing-Taiwan Expressway, starting its normalized automatic driving test and kicking off the prelude to a high-speed test of the self-driving truck.

PonyTron's autonomous truck drives on highways in the BDA. [Photo/kfqgw.beijing.gov.cn]

PonyTron obtained the first set of autonomous truck test licenses and highway test permits issued by the Beijing Municipal Intelligent Connected Vehicle Policy Pilot Zone in July 2021 .

The company has been committed to advancing the research, development and application of autonomous driving technology in the field of commercial vehicles, conducting commercial operation cooperation and model verification, and has completed 16,400 tons of cargo transportation and commercial operation mileage totaling 50,000 kilometers. 

The vehicle PonyTron tested is an autonomous truck developed based on FAW's J7 vehicle platform. It is mainly used in the logistics field and can achieve L4 autonomous driving on high and fast roads.

PonyTron's autonomous truck drives on highways in the BDA. [Photo/kfqgw.beijing.gov.cn]

Based on the "virtual driver" core technology independently developed by Pony.ai, the autonomous truck system uses a multi-sensor fusion scheme including multiple lidars, cameras, and millimeter wave radars, which can realize 360-degree perception and centimeter-level positioning.

The long-distance cameras of the truck system can cover a range of 1,000 meters and the rear-facing camera can help vehicles change lanes more safely on highways.

By using an optimal path and intelligent combination of accelerator and brake controls, the autonomous truck can achieve safe and stable driving and improve vehicle operating efficiency.

In the past year, PonyTron has developed rapidly and has obtained multiple test and operation permits in Beijing and Guangzhou, including Guangzhou's first autonomous driving truck test license and freight road transportation operation permit.