AI and Intelligent Vehicles Future Challenge (IVFC) in China: From cognitive intelligence to parallel intelligence

The accelerated development of AI brings new opportunities for human life and social improvement. For promoting the holistic integration of AI and economic society and further enhance China's innovation capacity in intelligence technologies, the Chinese government has launched a major R&D program in AI, within the framework of “Science and Technology Innovation 2030”, a national science and technology strategic development plan. The goal of this program is to explore the next generation AI theory and technology, and to focus on five areas: big-data-based AI, internet-based crowd intelligence, cross-media intelligence, hybrid augmented intelligence, and autonomous-intelligent systems. Additionally, in 2008 the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) launched a major research plan on Cognitive Computing of Visual and Auditory Information (2008–2017), the total expenditure of this plan is about $27M. In this research program, autonomous vehicles have been used as an integrated verification platform for the study of new cognitive computing models. Since 2009, NSFC has held annual autonomous vehicle competitions, called Intelligent Vehicles Future Challenge (IVFC). This keynote speech will give an overview of the Chinese perspective and practice on developing AI and related connected and autonomous vehicle research activities in the last decade, It will also discuss the promising transition from cognitive intelligence towards cyber-physical-social systems (CPSS) based parallel intelligence. On the basis of parallel intelligence, parallel driving aims at offering a unified approach for synergizing connected automated vehicles as well as intelligent transportation.