Hangzhou has once again demonstrated its technological prowess on the global innovation stage with Cainiao Network's release of the industry's first high-performance, large-scale reinforcement learning planner for autonomous vehicles. This groundbreaking development significantly enhances the adaptability of Cainiao's unmanned vehicles in complex scenarios, with the research being accepted by the prestigious CVPR 2025 academic conference.
Revolutionizing Autonomous Navigation
The joint research project between Cainiao's autonomous vehicle team and Zhejiang University has resulted in a novel autoregressive planner ( CarPlanner ) that addresses the efficiency and performance limitations of traditional reinforcement learning in trajectory planning. The research team achieved a world-first by demonstrating on the challenging nuPlan dataset that reinforcement learning-based planners now outperform conventional imitation learning and rule-based methods.
"Trajectory planning is the cornerstone of autonomous driving systems, ensuring safe and efficient navigation through complex environments," explained a Cainiao technical representative. "Our reinforcement learning-based planner represents a significant leap forward in making autonomous vehicle technology safer and more reliable."
Global Recognition and Additional Innovations
In another collaborative effort with Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Cainiao has developed an end-to-end autonomous driving system that generates high-quality planning trajectories. This system recently claimed top honors on NAVSIM, the globally recognized autonomous vehicle simulation and evaluation platform.
The technological achievements come as Cainiao accelerates its commercialization of logistics technology and expands its international presence. The company's L4 autonomous vehicles are now approved for sale and operation across China, currently serving more than 30 districts and counties. Cainiao's automation and digitalization projects have also been successfully implemented in 28 countries worldwide, with over 600 deployments marking the company's growing innovation and operational capabilities.
These advancements not only provide new technological momentum for Cainiao's autonomous vehicle development but also offer valuable insights for the global logistics industry's intelligent transformation, paving the way for deeper integration between logistics and cutting-edge technology.