Huawei announces foundation of autonomous driving network lab

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Huawei has announced the establishment of a joint laboratory focusing on autonomous driving network (AND) at the 2020 Huawei Autonomous Driving Network Technology Summit recently held in Suzhou, Jiangsu province.

At the summit, Huawei discussed with many professors from such renowned universities as Fudan University, Zhejiang University, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Northeastern University and Soochow University about the development prospect, the standard definition and forward-looking technologies related to autonomous driving network industry. 

(Photo source: Huawei)

The company said the joint lab is launched to build a technology cooperation platform for firms, universities and research institutes and promote the transfer of the research achievements of the autonomous driving technologies from laboratory to market. Going forward, the development of Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous driving technologies should rest upon the joint development of the industrial community, the academic world, scientific research institutions, the standard-setting bodies and clients.

Based on the technical directions currently recognized, Huawei’s newly-launched joint lab will place emphasis on such areas as the intention perception and understanding, the intelligent recommendation and decision-making, network simulation calculation and digital twin, in a bid to speed up the scale application of autonomous driving network.

According to Huawei, it has achieved Level 3 autonomous driving network in data center, which has been deployed in areas of finance and large enterprise first.

The concept of AND more targets the field of telecommunications. By applying the advanced AI and analytical capabilities that power complex systems such as self-driving vehicles and data center networks, Huawei's ADN aims to bring automation to core processes and inject higher intelligence into network operations and maintenance.

In last October, Huawei unveiled its autonomous driving network strategy at the SDN NFV World Congress 2019.

According to the keynote speech delivered by Yuan Bo, director of the Network Architecture Transformation Marketing Department of Carrier BG, Huawei proposed different levels of driving automation to apply to carriers' core operation processes in different scenarios and promoted gradual implementation of network intelligence.

He said the Huawei autonomous driving network features a simplified architecture and intelligent O&M (operations and maintenance). On one hand, the architecture of the network, from wireless, transport and core networks to the edge cloud, is all simplified to provide a foundation for autonomous driving. On the other hand, network O&M is more intelligent. Huawei launched iMaster intelligent O&M solutions that enable intelligent closed-loop O&M through intra-domain autonomy and inter-domain collaboration. iMaster NCE is intended for FBB, iMaster MAE for MBB, and iMaster AUTIN for inter-domain collaboration. iMaster NAIE provides an AI training platform, a data lake, and a reasoning framework, making it easier to apply AI technologies in the telecom industry and helping carriers, their partners, and third-party developers improve AI development efficiency.