Singapore is a global model for economic development and smart cities. Upon entering this "Garden City," the most profound impression left on visitors is the city-wide Wi-Fi coverage and intelligent services. Wi-Fi exists like air, and the internet permeates every aspect of life: transportation, healthcare, education, government services, and more. Immigrating to and settling in Singapore allows you to enjoy all the conveniences brought by a "Smart City." Recently, at the "World Internet Conference · Smart City" forum held in Wuzhen, Zhuang Qingwei, Director of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (China), shared the results of Singapore's smart city initiatives, with autonomous driving being one of the directions for local government pilots.
According to Zhuang Qingwei, Singapore's land area is only 741 square kilometers, which is very small, but the population density is high, reaching 8,000 people per square kilometer. At the same time, Singapore has industrial infrastructure such as the world's third-largest oil refinery. How can residents live happily in such a crowded city? This presents a severe challenge for the Singaporean government.
Singapore's chosen path to a solution is technology. Taking transportation as an example, how can vehicle capacity be doubled under existing road conditions? The local attempt is autonomous driving. The local government is striving to make Singapore the first country in the world to have an autonomous public bus network system.
Singapore plans to open a community to autonomous vehicles in 2015, using new technology to provide public transportation services, responsible for picking up and dropping off passengers and transporting them to other public transport hubs. The appearance of these autonomous vehicles is similar to golf carts, facilitating short-distance passenger transport, with a concept similar to the autonomous vehicles showcased by Google.
Paul Scerri, a senior researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pointed out that the intersection throughput efficiency of autonomous vehicles is twice that of human-driven vehicles, which helps alleviate congestion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by slow driving.
Regarding autonomous vehicles, Robin Li discussed the currently highly-regarded Baidu autonomous vehicle experiment at the "Internet Innovation and Sustainable Development" sub-forum on the morning of December 17. Li stated that when Baidu invested in the field of artificial intelligence several years ago, it did not know about autonomous vehicle technology. Currently, Baidu's autonomous vehicle has completed road testing in Beijing, with a maximum autonomous driving speed of 100 kilometers/hour: this is the first report card delivered by Baidu since it announced its entry into the autonomous vehicle research and development field in September 2014. At the exhibition on December 16, Robin Li demonstrated the autonomous vehicle technology to President Xi Jinping, who came to inspect it.