China to roll out technical norms for highway auxiliary facilities adapted to automated driving

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- China's Ministry of Transport is soliciting public opinion on the Draft Guidelines on the General Technical specifications for Highway Auxiliary Facilities Adapted to Automated Driving (hereinafter referred to as the Draft Guidelines), which is China’s first national-level highway technical norm related to autonomous driving.

As China is entering the initial phase of industrialization of autonomous driving applications, hammering out the dedicated technical specifications for highway auxiliary facilities available to autonomous vehicles is of great significance to the partial driving or full vehicle automation on the existing open roads, according to the Draft Guidelines.

(Photo source: AutoX)

The current technical requirements for highway auxiliary facilities are mainly designed to ensure a safe and smooth driving of a vehicle controlled by a human driver. To guarantee the secure running of autonomous vehicles, AI features will be added to the road facilities.

Highway auxiliary facilities adapted to automated driving generally include traffic safety and highway management facilities. Other pertinent auxiliary facilities contain HD map, positioning facility and roadside computing equipment.

The Draft Guidelines involve the detailed standards and norms about the facilities of positioning, communications, traffic signs, traffic control & induction, traffic perception, roadside computing, as well as energy supply & illumination. Moreover, some specifications at the software level, including HD map, autonomous driving-related detection &service and cybersecurity, are also offered.

The newly-released specifications are applicable to the auxiliary facilities on the autonomous vehicle-only lanes of expressways or first-class highways, and on the autonomous vehicle-only highways.

The Draft Guidelines point out that the relatively closed environment, the level pavement structure, the smooth road alignment and the complete upgradeable safety & management facilities of expressways and first-class highways will make the realization of partial driving or full vehicle automation easier.

Aside from fundamental elements such as physical traffic signs, marks and guard rail, the highway auxiliary facilities in the future will feature vehicle-to-road communication devices, high-precision digital map with accuracy of no more than 0.1 meters, autonomous vehicle-only lanes, observation & supervision reference stations, digital traffic signs & markings as well as control stations for high precision positioning.