THE city’s legislature will review legislation on driverless vehicles and may pass related bills this year.

At a seminar on the legislation on driverless vehicles attended by Luo Wenzhi, director with the Standing Committee of Shenzhen Municipal People’s Congress, during his field research in Pingshan last week, representatives from Huawei Technologies, BYD and AutoX, and officials of related government departments believe legislation on driverless vehicles is badly needed to clear the barriers for vehicles without drivers on public roads.

The lack of legality in using a driverless car and the difficulties in registration, business operation and defining responsibilities could be solved through legislation, attendees said.

During the field trip, Luo led the research team to visit the driverless testing platform and had a ride on a driverless bus.

The driving testing platform that was put into operation last year has a 2.6-kilometer road section for testing. So far it has offered service for 13 enterprises and the testing distance has reached 18,000 kilometers.

Shenzhen began trial of driverless buses on a 1.2-kilometer route in the Futian Bonded Zone in December 2017. Equipped with lidar sensors, cameras and GPS antennas, the buses can avoid hitting pedestrians, other vehicles and barriers, and can safely change lanes and stop at designated locations. The driverless system integrates multiple technologies such as artificial intelligence, automatic control and visual computation.

In October last year, Panda Buses were put into trial operation on the route between the office buildings of DeepBlue Technology Co. Ltd. and Shenzhen SZLMCU Technology Co. Ltd. in Pingshan District.

Residents can make reservations for free rides by scanning the QR codes at the bus stops. The bus is also powered with a high-performance AI algorithm that can judge, plan, control and decide the operations of the bus during the whole process.

So far the roads for driverless bus tests in the city have extended 100 kilometers.

The Standing Committee of Shenzhen Municipal People’s Congress has listed legislation on driverless vehicles into this year’s agenda. The legislation is believed to safeguard the development of the industry, guides advancement of technologies, averts risk and encourages innovation. (Han Ximin)