By Deng Zhang, Xinyi Li, iChongqing News

Chongqing- The opening ceremony of i-VISTA Grand Challenge kicked off on August 24, following the pace of the Smart China Expo 2019. As a significant part of Smart China Expo 2019, i-VISTA Grand Challenge is a public competition of smart cars.

It focuses to base on the high-level platform of information about this industry and presents international achievements in science and technology fields, therefore, promoting the technological progress and commercialization of self-driving cars.

The competition consists of four parts – Advanced Driver Assistance Systems Challenge (ADAS), Urban Traffic Scene Challenge, Automatic Driving Innovation Application Challenge, and Automatic Driving Commercialization Challenge. The whole bonus exceeds seven million RMB, which is a competition with the most total bonus and the most types of cars in China.

The opening ceremony of i-VISTA Grand Challenge kicked off on August 24

Huge awards attract individuals to take part in the competition

ADAS challenge was held on August 24, including AEB and APS games. The AEB is Autonomous Emergency Braking, which focuses on the automatic braking function when a smart car meets with stationary obstacles or jaywalking. Meanwhile, APS is an Autonomous Parking System, which will explore the parking function of a car, including regular (straight) parking, parallel parking, and angled parking.

AEB focuses on the automatic braking function when a smart car meets with stationary obstacles or jaywalking

Moreover, it’s worth mentioning that there were not only professional groups but also individual groups. It means there were 36 contestants from the society, bringing their own cars with smart functions such as automatic parking or emergency brake.

For this year, the ADAS challenge promised the huge awards for victors – contestants who were selected from the audition obtained a Huawei mobile phone and ranking contestants could receive a Chang’an Automobile.

APS explore the parking function of a car, including regular (straight) parking, parallel parking, and angled parking

However, does it mean that the better the car the better smart functions? The answer is NO.

Piao Changhao, associate professor of Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, said, “Big brands will consider the comfort of a car so that some smart functions are not that good, compared with common cars. AEB is too sensitive to consider comfort at the same time. Therefore, it will not suggest applying the AEB function for mass-produced cars at 30 KPH or below, or the car will brake or stop suddenly when traffic congestion or road traffic accidents happen. Hence, lots of car companies will reduce the sensibility of their produced cars.”

AEB is too sensitive to consider comfort at the same time so that it will not suggest applying the AEB function for mass-produced cars at 30 KPH or below

From the results of the individual group, big brands, such as Tesla or Mercedes-Benz, didn’t get a high score because of the considering of comfort. In addition to this, some didn’t get a high score in APS since their manufacturers didn’t consider the angled parking, leading these cars could not finish the task of parking.

According to Piao, technologies and vehicle performances of some Chinese car manufactures can be comparable to big imported brands.