Some of the world’s top and latest automotive technology will be exhibited in the automobile exhibition area of the first China International Import Expo (CIIE). Among them, the ProAI, artificial intelligence, computing system for self-driving cars will be introduced by car parts maker ZF Friedrichshafen AG (ZF), attracting much attention.

As an exhibitor actively attending the CIIE, Andreas Weller, president of ZF’s Asia-Pacific region, disclosed that the company will bring cutting-edge technologies in self-driving car and electric vehicle, as well as products customized for the Chinese market.

These include a “supercomputer” for automobiles — ProAI, an AI computing system for self-driving cars. With a size as small as a laptop, it will be equipped inside the car and can process data collected by external sensors, allowing the car to know very well about its surrounding environment through deep learning technology.

“This technology has been done to match the future self-driving trend,” said Zheng Yunqing, communications director of ZF’s Asia-Pacific region, adding that the company has developed this “supercomputer” as the car’s brain in a very short time.

“I think that this represents an effort of our company — with a history of over a century — to meet future automobile demands,” she said. Although ProAI is as small as a laptop, its capability is much bigger. Self-driving cars need to fully maintain computing power as well as the processing speed because the road conditions are constantly changing, and current laser radar, sensors, and other technologies are rapidly developing. Therefore, the requirements for vehicle’s computing power will need to be raised in the future, even these requirement seem impossible based on current standards. However, ProAI can solve this problem.

The ProAI itself has an Xavier chip based on an octa-core processor with 7 billion transistors, which can manage 30 trillion operations per second at only 30 watts. Its deep learning ability, which is the core of self-driving, and power consumption both rank high in the industry.

ProAI is the vehicle’s central control unit; and ZF can take advantage of its modularized design to develop its self-driving functions. At present, ZF has developed a whole modularized development environment, including an AI-equipped functional framework, and a set of configurations of level-4 automated driving. Its modules, based on the technical strategy of “observe, think and act”, can adjust to the specific applications to help vehicles recognize and calculate things in urban traffic.

Zheng said the expo is a very important display platform for the automobile industry, and as ZF is not simply a component supplier and focuses on the dynamical system of whole cars, it needs to actively show its own technical strength and competitiveness during the expo.

“Our original intention for us to attend CIIE was to meet partners from all over the world in a short time, which will be helpful for joint development of products. As we are dealing with the demands of travel in the future, we need new partners as well as old ones, and together we can discuss about how the world will be look like in the future,” Zheng said.

The expo is a very good chance for ZF to look beyond the role of an automobile component manufacturer, and ZF is looking forward to the possibility of cooperation with clients all over China and the world for deeper exchanges and more opportunities, she added.