Yutong Xiaoyu 2.0 Autonomous Bus Wins 2021 Red Dot Design Award

On June 21, the autonomous bus Xiaoyu 2.0 designed by Yutong was awarded the 2021 Red Dot Award. The Zhengzhou, China-based company said it is world's first autonomous bus manufacturer to win the world-class industrial design award, as well as the only bus brand in China to be so recognized.

Yutong said its combination of artificial intelligence, aesthetic design, and SAE Level 4 autonomous driving are why Xiaoyu 2.0 won the prestigious Red Dot Award.

Yutong Xaioyu combines form and function

With 5G V2X (vehicle-to-everything) transmission technology, unnecessary suspensions are avoided by the interactions between vehicle and traffic lights, said Yutong. Just like the AI victory of Google DeepMind's AlphaGo, embedded radar sensors plus computing strategy perfect Xiaoyu 2.0's braking distance, timing, and smoothness, claimed the company

Xiaoyu 2.0 has a full stack of both software and hardware to enable it to operate autonomously amid the complexities of all-weather transportation, according to Yutong. Xiaoyu 2.0 does not rely on external infrastructure but on embedded intelligence, with over 500 TOPS (trillions of operations per second), it added.

Yutong may be an early player in the field of new energy and the Internet of Things (IoT), but it said it has mastered five essential technologies including integrated perception, decision and planning, execution parameters, onboard supercomputing platform, and cloud control platform. In 2020, Yutong said it put great effort into building the finest engineering team for autonomous driving in the world.

Also last year, the release of intelligent traffic brand WitGo became the real solution for city-level traffic problems, said Yutong. WitGo can support smart vehicles, intelligent roads, unmanned terminals, autonomous charging systems, intelligent bus stops, and cloud control platforms, said the company. Yutong said its systems will help intelligent and autonomous driving gain momentum in the new era of 5G.

A vision for the future

Xiaoyu 2.0 has entered the stage of massive distribution in Guangzhou, Nanjing, Sansha, Changsha and Zhengzhou, China. The implementation has been over 700 days, reaching 360,000 trips and 7.1 million km (4.4 million mi.) of operations for open roads. Xiaoyu 2.0 was also the first autonomous bus to be introduced into a tarmac test at Changsha Airport.

Yutong said that Xiaoyu's futuristic look was inspired by spacecraft. Its designers reconciled engineering and aesthetic factors with oversized portholes that accommodate lidar and radar mapping sensors.

The company said that autonomous driving is the future of the entire vehicle industry. With more than 50 years of experience in the public transportation sector, Yutong said that it has accumulated the essential technology for new-energy buses, as well as for intelligent driving and commercial operations, to be a leader in the global industry.