Mar. 22, 2024
Source: Haidian Daily
“Our future autonomous delivery vehicles will need greater load capacity and higher intelligence,” said a Rino.ai engineer recently. At the company’s headquarters on Huayuan East Road in Haidian District, Beijing, reporters observed the R&D team in active discussion over ongoing projects.
In the first quarter of 2024, Rino.ai’s autonomous driving products achieved significant breakthroughs in technology, operations, and commercialization. The company’s goal for this year is to reach 1,000 daily active vehicles (number of autonomous delivery vehicles in operation on a given day). By 2026, the company expects this figure to grow to 5,000.
Current data shows that Rino.ai has over 100 operational autonomous vehicles nationwide. In addition to Beijing, cities including Shenzhen, Hefei, Wuxi, Shanghai, and Chongqing—along with more than 30 other cities—have seen major supermarkets and courier companies adopt Rino.ai’s driverless vehicle products and services.
Autonomous Driving Reduces Logistics Costs
As a global leader in L4 autonomous driving, Rino.ai has nearly a decade of experience in autonomous driving technology and product development. The company has been recognized as a National High-Tech Enterprise and a Specialized and Innovative Enterprise, and has been selected for the Ministry of Transport’s first batch of Intelligent Transportation Pilot Applications. It also holds surveying and mapping qualifications certified by the Ministry of Natural Resources and ISO9001 quality management certification.
Since its first autonomous cargo truck entered the market in 2019, Rino.ai’s business has expanded to more than 30 cities worldwide, with a total of over 5 million kilometers driven on urban roads.
According to CTO Xia Tian, the company’s third-generation model offers 1-ton load capacity and a 10-kilometer service radius, enabling smooth shuttling between central and satellite warehouses. “At present, our autonomous cargo trucks are becoming a new productive force, gradually reshaping production relationships, bringing manpower closer to the last-mile, and providing flexible services to consumers,” Xia said.
Rino.ai’s autonomous driving capabilities are built on six core technologies: perception modules, deep learning, self-developed hardware, simulation platforms, decision-making and planning, and dispatch platforms. These enable the vehicles to handle complex real-world scenarios such as bad weather, pedestrian and vehicle avoidance, and intricate urban road networks.
In perception, breakthroughs in 3D sensing and temporal learning have expanded the system’s ability to detect road structures, traffic scenes, and predict the behavior of road users, providing more accurate and reliable information for planning and control.
Xia added that the company’s online algorithm modules are transitioning from manually designed, isolated algorithms to a unified deep-learning-based architecture. Another major advantage is the data loop—operational mileage data continuously feeds back into online models for rapid iteration, making the system increasingly intelligent. “Our per-vehicle operational mileage is the highest in the industry. This advantage, combined with our data loop, directly translates into smarter autonomous vehicles,” he said.
Increasing R&D Investment to Conquer Core Technologies
In recent years, many cities have made major advances in intelligent vehicle industry development, application scenario expansion, and urban infrastructure upgrades. By integrating both autonomous intelligence and vehicle-road coordination, cities are accelerating the development of collaborative autonomous driving technologies and building open test zones and demonstration operation bases.
“Looking ahead, Rino.ai will increase R&D investment, focus on breaking through core technologies, enhance user experience, and build differentiated advantages,” Xia stated. “With our proprietary urban-road autonomous logistics solutions, we aim to truly make logistics cheaper, and transportation safer and more economical.”
According to company plans, Rino.ai’s active autonomous delivery fleet will reach 1,000 vehicles in 2024 and grow to 5,000 by 2026.
