Hello everyone, I'm Wang Leichen, but you can call me Lao Wang. I joined Bosch in 2021. Prior to that, I completed my undergraduate studies at Tongji University, followed by further studies in Germany where I earned my master's and PhD. As early as 2018, during my studies in Stuttgart, Germany, I interned at Corporate Research and Daimler AG's headquarters. Focusing on autonomous vehicle perception technology fueled my passion for self-driving technology and set the course for my career.

I came back to Shanghai in 2021 and officially joined Corporate Research as a research scientist. Right from the start of my role, I immersed myself in the research and development of the vehicle-infrastructure cooperative perception project and successfully secured €150,000 in funding for it in 2022. Following that, my team and I achieved the third prize globally on the renowned KITTI autonomous driving object tracking leaderboard. At the end of 2023, I had the privilege of becoming one of the heads of the mapless driving pre-research project, a major focus area for Bosch.

I believe that mapless driving represents the future of autonomous driving, as it liberates us from the need for high-precision maps. These maps, after all, are constrained by their coverage and how quickly they can be updated, while mapless driving requires vehicles to have cognitive skills akin to those of human drivers, allowing them to handle complex traffic situations on their own.

With the help of onboard sensors and algorithms, vehicles can employ mapless driving technology to identify their surroundings in real-time and make driving decisions accordingly. For instance, while a car is cruising steadily on a road, if it identifies a forklift ahead that it needs to avoid, the system will think like a human about whether to change lanes to the left or right. If it also detects a red traffic light at the upcoming intersection, it will decide to first slow down before deciding what to do next. Mapless driving makes vehicles smarter, and its further advancements will lead to an end-to-end model. This will involve a black box system resembling the human brain that manages all driving decisions, eliminating the need for separate algorithms for every step of the process. In the business sector, the use of mapless driving extends beyond specific limited scenarios to focus on broader, all-encompassing applications, providing end users with a safer and more comfortable driving experience.

Our team has been developing the mapless driving perception module since the end of 2023. At the CVPR 2024 Autonomous Grand Challenge held in June this year, the joint team from Cross-Domain Computing Solutions Division, Corporate Research, and Tsinghua University stood out among 120 teams from 10 countries and regions, securing fourth place in the Mapless category. This achievement highlighted Cross-Domain Computing Solutions Division's advanced R&D expertise in mapless and less map-based driving technologies. The results of this competition have been recognized by professionals in the industry, and what's especially valuable that we are collaborating with the business sector to integrate this achievement into a project that is nearing mass production. The project is highly significant to the company and is seen by the leadership as one of their top priorities. In addition, we will be traveling to Germany to present our latest developments in this area to headquarters, including cutting-edge technology and its cost advantages, to increase the international visibility of our local R&D team. Our team feels very fortunate and proud to be directly involved in this technological revolution.

I find great enjoyment in facing challenges. Each year, I participate in an international algorithm competition whenever possible. While my best result so far has only been a third place, I never feel regret. On the contrary, I actually treasure this ongoing chase, as it's an amazing experience to discover where my limits lie. Back to work, I think this is true as well. We need to be aware of the fierce competition in the autonomous driving industry; especially in the Chinese market, the competitive landscape is no longer what it was four or five years ago, which puts unprecedented pressure on Bosch. In our role as a pre-research team, we need to balance cutting-edge technology, computing power, platforms, speed, and customer demands in our daily work. The work is demanding, stressful, and involves significant risks. Be that as it may, I consider myself fortunate. On one hand, I enjoy this external competition and the entire process. On the other hand, collaborating with our team, a dream team that features the "best brains" from both Corporate Research and the business sector, helps me navigate high-intensity competition with greater ease.

What I find most remarkable about Bosch is how transparent the communication is, how cohesive the team is, and how inclusive the organization is. Such a corporate culture is immensely beneficial for R&D teams. As an unlisted company, we are under pressure regarding profit margins and cash flow. Nonetheless, even with financial constraints, the company's leadership, with a strong strategic foresight, remains committed to long-term principles by consistently investing in research areas that have yet to produce immediate economic benefits. This is very rare in the current business climate. At the same time, we are very goal-oriented and encourage teamwork, eliminating internal friction. We particularly excel in cross-department collaboration, which is highly efficient. I believe these factors are crucial for the development of high-tech products.

At Bosch, we operate under the spirit "LEAD WORK WIN." We strongly believe that "down-to-earth approaches and technology-driven innovation" is essential for ongoing success. Amidst competition and pressure, we tackle challenges with composure, leveraging state-of-the-art technology to achieve breakthroughs in the field of mapless driving. We navigate through uncertainty, explore the unknown, enjoy the journey without a map, and celebrate the sense of achievement that follows each breakthrough.

KITTI is an evaluation platform for autonomous driving technology and computer vision algorithms, established in partnership between Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago. The platform supports the development of autonomous driving technology by providing real-world driving data and a range of benchmark tests. The KITTI competition features several challenges, such as object detection and tracking, pedestrian detection, and more, attracting many participants from academia and industry alike.

CVPR, or the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, is one of the premier international conference in the fields of computer vision and autonomous driving. It draws the attention and active participation of tens of thousands of top researchers from academia and industry worldwide each year.