Shenxiang original author | Hongjian

Core key point

Map products in the mobile Internet era have met most of the needs of users, but the ceiling of the map industry has not yet appeared.

BaiduThe map is based on the "new generation artificial intelligence map", and changes are made in interactive experience, location information service, travel service and decision-making.

Baidu, Inc. Map is no longer a simple map product, it continues to expand the boundary and become an important infrastructure in the AI era.

Probably many people don't remember that when the Internet was not popular more than a decade ago, they used to travel with a map that had been folded several times, looking for city landmarks.

In the era of PC, maps surf the Internet, and users can query locations and plan travel routes on computers. Entering the era of mobile Internet, such big cities are loaded into mobile phone screens, location and route information can be provided in real time, and everyone has "private navigation".

When small shops in nooks and crannies can be accurately located and there is no pressure to find their way to strange cities, maps in the mobile Internet era have addressed most of the needs of users and become an increasingly important infrastructure for the Internet. At this time, where should the next step of the map industry go? How many new increments and imagination are there? Where is the breakthrough?

In this regard, Li Ying, general manager of Baidu, Inc. Map Department, brought the answer to Baidu, Inc. Map at the Geek Park Innovation Conference held on December 21. With the progress of technology, many changes have taken place in the form of maps. In the era of AI, users will have new requirements for maps.

Li Ying said in her speech: "the innovative spirit of Baidu, Inc. map lies in freedom, refinement and knowledge-seeking. We let the voice be personalized, so that travel can be accurately predicted, so that the real world can be depicted with high precision." let users explore the world more easily, and the new generation of artificial intelligence maps can do more and better. "

From past experience, we can see that the changes of the times centered on technological change will subvert all kinds of industries. In the map industry, what changes will the new technology direction represented by AI bring?

纵：Where is the "new" of the new generation of artificial intelligence map?

In Li Ying's view, the ceiling of the entire map industry is far from coming. In the AI era, the map is full of more vitality.

Baidu, Inc. Map has always regarded AI as the underlying support for product development. In 2018, Baidu, Inc. Map determined the product positioning of the "new generation artificial intelligence map". The new product takes artificial intelligence technology as the core driving force and aims to provide users with intelligent travel services.

What exactly does AI bring to the map? In the practical application level that is most easily perceived by users, Baidu, Inc. Map has made many useful attempts and changes.

The first is the interactive experience. nowadays, intelligent map has become an indispensable tool for drivers. what we often see in life is that the mobile phone is placed on the bracket next to the driver in order to facilitate the driver to inquire about the road conditions, but this will inevitably distract the driver. causing safety risks in driving. The solution of Baidu, Inc. 's map is to use voice interaction instead of touch interaction. Rely on the voice assistant of AI technology to achieve voice control in the whole scene, which means that users do not need to use their fingers to touch, liberate their hands, and improve driving safety and driving experience.

In the process of interaction, the voice function of Baidu, Inc. Map and the dialogue of users are also more anthropomorphic. Xiaodu, the voice assistant, makes the dialogue smoother through real-time feedback on the reception and processing of information through words such as "I am listening" and "I am thinking".

In addition to practicality, technology also adds interest to voice interaction.

In September 2019, Baidu, Inc. Map officially released the world's first map voice package customization product, the internal code name "lark Ling". Users only need to record 20 sentences on Baidu, Inc. Map App and generate a complete personal voice package in about 20 minutes. The voice package can be used in all scenes such as voice guide, voice interaction and navigation in Baidu, Inc. map, and can also be shared with relatives and friends.

The voice customization function uses the Meitrion model of Baidu, Inc. 's original style transfer technology, which allows the speaker's timbre and style to be reproduced through the mobile phone, thus giving the map product a temperature. For drivers, hearing their children's immature voice broadcast professional navigation, the driving process will also become warm and interesting. Even if there are some problems in practice, such as unclear pronunciation, irregular pause and non-standard Putonghua, Baidu, Inc. map can be synthesized smoothly.

So far, more than a million users have recorded their own voice packages through voice customization, including more than 150 stars, anchors and online celebrities.

Visually, most of the current map products are plane interaction, and the presentation of plane for complex areas will make it difficult for users to perceive it. For example, in the "3D" city of Chongqing, plane interaction is often unable to meet the navigation needs of users. And Baidu, Inc. map provides "walking AR navigation", "AR perimeter search" and other AR functions, can enable users to enter the AR interactive scene, experience and efficiency can be improved.

The purpose of enhancing the experience based on AI technology is to make the map more responsive to the daily needs of users and meet more scenarios. On the other hand, it is not difficult to find that the innovation at the experience level is essentially inseparable from the improvement of map production mode and efficiency by AI.

Take the location information service as an example, this is the user's initial demand for the map. with the development of map products and the improvement of technology, the user's demand has expanded from knowing the address to the dimension of knowing more detailed information about the location. this means that the difficulty of map information collection and production will increase. In the AI era, Baidu, Inc. Map has carried out multi-dimensional mining of location information with the help of AI technology, which makes the location information service change to a more accurate and multi-dimensional direction, and timeliness, accuracy and convenience are the focus of the change.

According to the introduction, Baidu, Inc. Map has more than 150 million of global POI data, an average of 5 million data updates per month, and aggregates information scattered on different platforms through POI high-precision knowledge graph. When users search for a certain location, its name, category, tag, score, peripheral information and other content will appear.

Not only the static search location, for the entire travel process, map products still have room for development.

Today, Baidu, Inc. Map is based on big data's computing power and trajectory information. After applying Baidu, Inc. Flying Propeller open source deep learning platform, it can predict the most suitable route and more accurate time for users. Based on the AI capability, Baidu, Inc. Map has upgraded the ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) function, which can not only calculate and predict the arrival time according to real-time road conditions, but also recommend traffic collocation, predict road conditions, adjust travel time and route for users, and realize "future travel".

According to the information disclosed by Li Ying at the Geek Park Innovation Conference, the future travel ETA is also the industry's first future travel time estimation function.

In the specific operation, as long as users set what time to leave tomorrow morning, they can predict what time they will arrive at their destination tomorrow morning. According to Li Ying, this function has also been upgraded. She takes her own experience as an example. If you need to arrive at the venue at 09:30 and set the arrival time to 9:30, Baidu, Inc. 's map can reverse the departure time and make the experience smoother.

In addition to future travel, Baidu, Inc. Map will also provide appropriate personalized travel plans for users according to their usage habits and current scenes. For example, in commuter scenarios, Xiaodu assistant will push travel reminders, weather information, traffic restriction number and congestion index prompts to users; in tourism scenarios, Xiaodu assistant will push scenic spot introduction, scenic spot heat, tour map and other information, and provide real-time voice explanation.

It is worth mentioning that in the tourism scene, Baidu, Inc. Map launched the "1x 3" intelligent tourism product matrix with AI as the core. Users can obtain comprehensive scenic spot information and immersive experience through the three capabilities of small AI guide, AR guide and VR panoramic virtual tour.

In the upstream part of map production, it is reported that Baidu, Inc. Map 80% data collection process has been AI-based, and its changes in interactive experience, location information services, travel services and decision-making have also benefited from the addition of AI technology, and the products are becoming more accurate, richer and easier to use.

It can be seen that AI is improving the production capacity, product experience and function upgrade of Baidu, Inc. Map from the whole chain, which is based on the evolution that is difficult to achieve in the traditional way, and is the best example to prove the ability of AI to empower the map industry. For Baidu, Inc., who is transforming from overall strategy to AI, map products are also an excellent testing ground for AI technology.

横：Baidu, Inc. 's map "borderless"

In addition to the more possibility of mining the map vertically, as the map has become the infrastructure of the Internet, the application boundary of the map has long gone beyond its own scope and connected with other things on a larger scale.

In the process of development, Baidu, Inc. Map does not limit itself to tool products, but continues to expand the boundary.

Geographically, at present, Baidu, Inc. 's map covers all countries and regions in the world, with overseas POI coverage exceeding 98% and Chinese outbound travel user penetration exceeding 50%.

Baidu, Inc. Map's exploration of internationalization began in 2014, ranging from Asia to Europe, and then to South America, North America and Africa. Its Chinese cultural capabilities in voice navigation and shopping, transportation, scenic spot explanation and other functions are closer to the needs of Chinese tourists. Take the famous scenic spot "Glass Beach" in Vladivostok as an example. Although it is not shown in Chinese on the map, when users search for "Glass Beach", they can still accurately find the scenic spot on the map. In popular scenic spots such as Tokyo Asakusa Temple and the Paris Opera House, Baidu, Inc. maps are also equipped with Chinese voice guides.

Being close to the needs of Chinese tourists is also reflected in the details of outbound tourism. in addition to the functions of conventional Chinese food and hotel exploration, Baidu, Inc. Map also provides users with oral food, international directions cards, real-time bus information, heat maps and other information. provide more detailed life services and become a guide for tourists to live in a foreign country.

With the above innovations in technology and products, Baidu, Inc. Map has gone beyond the simple map category.

On the industry boundary, Baidu, Inc. Map exports its underlying capabilities to many industries and broadens the service radius through an open platform.

A few days ago, the 2019 Baidu, Inc. Map Ecology Conference was held in Beijing and released the ecological panorama of the "New Generation artificial Intelligence Map". While demonstrating its omni-directional AI capabilities, it also let us see the figure of Baidu, Inc. map hidden behind many industries.

Ecological panorama of Baidu, Inc. 's map

Baidu, Inc. said at the meeting that based on Baidu, Inc. 's AI technology such as Baidu, Inc. brain and Baidu, Inc. Intelligent Cloud and the product data strength of maps for more than a decade, Baidu, Inc. Map has created the largest intelligent location service platform in China, exporting eight major application capabilities of intelligent positioning, route planning, navigation, road conditions, map and image services, trajectory services, location search services, and intelligent Mini Program to global developers, enabling ecological partners.

For example:

Cooperative developers related to the government, life services and convenient travel work together to create a city map

Cooperate with industry developers related to geographical location and geographic data of various applications to create industry maps.

Form customized solutions for intelligent transportation, shared travel, express logistics, statistical planning, government affairs and people's livelihood, business geography, hotel tourism, intelligent equipment, financial credit and other industries.

At the same time, based on the map scene, Baidu, Inc. Map also builds an intelligent Mini Program platform, creates a "rich content" ecology, and carries out in-depth cooperation with platforms in the fields of travel, content and payment. Baidu, Inc. Map can provide services and content in many fields.

These innovations at the application level, production level and ecological level will feed back the development of Baidu, Inc. map and further promote the development of Baidu, Inc. map vertical and horizontal strategy. Li Ying said in her speech that during the National Day holiday this year, the cumulative number of users of Baidu, Inc. Map Intelligent Voice Assistant had exceeded 300 million, and this number continued to grow. At the same time, Baidu, Inc. 's smart Mini Program ecology and internationalization capabilities are providing a wider range of services for users.

Actively explore the development boundary of map products in the AI era, not only get more development space for Baidu, Inc. Map, but also expand the imagination space of the industry as a whole, and bring more convenient services to users.

With the advent of the 5G era, the Internet of everything will become a reality, and products based on AI technology will be able to capture the development dividend under the wave of new technologies more quickly. The breakthroughs and innovations in user experience and industry ecology in the next stage of AI Map represented by Baidu, Inc. Map will become an important variable that will affect the development direction and pattern of the industry.