On May 11th, Red Star Capital Bureau reported that an Ideal L9 car owner from Xiangyang, Hubei Province, recently claimed to have activated an auxiliary driving system on the highway. The vehicle detected a picture of a small truck on a high-altitude billboard while driving, and suddenly brake suddenly, causing a rear end collision. According to the traffic police, the car owner bears full responsibility for this accident. The car owner believes that the accident occurred due to the vehicle's fault, and the new car that has not been registered has become an accident vehicle. They demand compensation of 20000 yuan from the manufacturer.
On May 10th, the relevant person in charge of Ideal Automobile (02015. HK/LI. US) replied to the Red Star Capital Bureau that the cause of the accident was the misidentification of the image as the actual vehicle, "it is indeed a system misidentification, and the software system will be improved in the future.". For compensation, the Ideal Automobile 4S dealership has proposed a cash compensation plan of 4000 yuan, but has not yet reached an agreement with the car owner.
Automotive industry analyst Liu Hao told Red Star Capital Bureau that currently, intelligent driving technology is generally in the L2 stage, and the systems and algorithms of various brands are not yet mature enough to replace drivers in fully controlling vehicles.
According to the national recommended standard for the classification of automotive driving automation, the L2 level of driving automation is combined driving assistance, with the target and event detection and response subjects being the driver and the system, and the responsible subject still being the human driver.
In this accident, the Ideal L9 suddenly activated the AEB (emergency braking function) when there were no obvious obstacles after activating the assisted driving system, a situation known as "ghost braking". The principle of AEB is to detect the distance of obstacles ahead in real time through sensors such as cameras and radars. The measured distance is compared with the alarm distance and safety distance. If the distance is less than the safety distance, the AEB system will start and the car will automatically brake.
Liu Hao stated that the ghost brake is related to the vehicle's perception system. Among sensors, millimeter wave radar is not good at recognizing static objects, and cameras are greatly affected by external environments. Nowadays, visual and radar fusion solutions are commonly used, but there is a problem of inaccurate recognition.
"Misidentification of billboards may be due to the forward millimeter wave radar being too sensitive to metal materials, triggering active braking. However, this situation has been improved after the introduction of BEV large models, network occupation, and other technologies." A certain automotive engineer told Red Star Capital Bureau, "It may also be because there are too many perception hardware, which affects static clutter filtering. The perception system collects too many interference items, which can easily trigger conservative commands."
It is understood that the Ideal L9 Pro model is equipped with 10 cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars, and 1 millimeter wave radar; The Ideal L9 Ultra version is equipped with 11 cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars, 1 millimeter wave radar, and 1 lidar.
Red Star Capital Bureau noticed that this is not the first time Ideal Automobile has misidentified.
In May 2023, an Ideal L7 recognized Su Bingtian's billboard as a real person while driving, and was abruptly stopped by a rear car.
In March 2023, an Ideal L9 car owner posted a video claiming that while paying respects to their ancestors in the cemetery, they found that the radar inside the car showed people around the vehicle, but in reality, no pedestrians had passed by outside the car. Ideal car customer service stated that models such as the Ideal L9 perceive the surrounding environment through LiDAR and visual cameras. Due to the limitations of sensor recognition capabilities in the current market, vehicles may experience abnormal situations in certain scenarios. We will optimize the algorithm to enhance recognition capabilities and update user vehicles through OTA to eliminate safety hazards in the future.
In January 2023, an ideal car owner in Shanghai reported that while driving on a rainy night, the central control screen showed someone running and chasing the car from behind. Ideal Automobile responded that this is a flaw in the visual perception algorithm, and there is a certain probability that the rearview camera will be disturbed by water droplets in rainy and nighttime environments. At present, algorithm research and development have added negative sample annotation data of halo images for such scenarios, and the algorithm is currently being validated internally. It is expected that the algorithm will be updated in the next version to optimize this issue.
Red Star News reporter Wu Danruo