中国科学家使用创新芯片为自动自行车提供动力

中国科学家使用创新芯片为自动自行车提供动力

While tech giants like Tesla and Google are working hard to perfect autonomous cars, a team of scientists in China is developing a self-driving bicycle and their results are pretty impressive.

当特斯拉(Tesla)和谷歌等科技巨头正在努力完善自动驾驶汽车时，中国的一个科学家团队却在开发一款自动驾驶自行车，他们的成果令人印象深刻。

Showcased in a short video presentation, the autonomous bicycle developed by scientists at Tsinghua University, in Beijing, can balance itself while also avoiding obstacles, following certain trajectories and obeying vocal commands. It can do all these things thanks to a revolutionary type of computer chip that combines two different architectural approaches to computing that hadn’t really worked well together until now, due to communication difficulties between the two systems. However, if this self-driving bike is any indication, the Chinese seem to have solved those issues.

在一段简短的视频演示中，清华大学的科学家们研发的这款自动自行车能够自我平衡，同时还能避开障碍物，沿着特定的轨迹行驶，并服从声音指令。多亏了一种革命性的计算机芯片，它将两种不同的计算体系结构方法结合在一起，而由于两种系统之间的通信困难，这两种方法直到现在还不能很好地协同工作。然而，如果这款自动驾驶自行车是一个迹象，那么中国似乎已经解决了这些问题。

This autonomous bicycle is not the first of its kind – A US University has a similar project underway – but the computer chip powering it certainly is. It combines computer science-based machine learning and human brain-inspired networks, allowing it to perform several actions independently at the same time. Because the new chip, called Tianjic, allows for easy communication between its network, it can balance the bicycle, while also avoiding obstacles in its path and follow a number of verbal commands.

这款自动自行车并不是同类产品中的第一款——美国一所大学也在进行类似的项目——但驱动它的电脑芯片肯定是第一款。它结合了基于计算机科学的机器学习和人类大脑启发的网络，允许它在同一时间独立地执行几个动作。由于这款名为“天启”的新芯片可以方便地在网络之间进行通讯，它可以平衡自行车，同时还能避开道路上的障碍物，并遵循一些口头指令。

“Using just one chip, we can demonstrate the simultaneous processing of versatile algorithms and models in an unmanned bicycle system, realizing real-time object detection, tracking, voice control, obstacle avoidance and balance control,” Chinese scientists from the Center for Brain Inspired Computing Research at Tsinghua University wrote in a paper. “Our study is expected to stimulate AGI development by paving the way for more generalized hardware platforms.”

清华大学脑智能计算研究中心的中国科学家在一篇论文中写道:“仅用一个芯片，我们就可以在无人驾驶自行车系统中演示多功能算法和模型的同时处理，实现实时目标检测、跟踪、语音控制、避障和平衡控制。”“我们的研究有望为更通用的硬件平台铺平道路，从而刺激AGI的发展。”

While claims of accelerated Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) – a term used to describe artificial intelligence on a par with human intelligence – are too bold to be taken seriously, the new Tianjic chip is proof of the strides Chinese scientists have made in the field of artificial intelligence. They may not yet have the most advanced AI chips in the world, but if their latest achievements – like those eerie AI news anchors – are any indication, they are getting there and fast.

尽管有关加速人工智能(AGI)的说法过于大胆，不值得认真对待，但新的天基芯片证明了中国科学家在人工智能领域取得的进展。AGI是一个用来形容人工智能与人类智能水平相当的术语。他们可能还没有世界上最先进的人工智能芯片，但如果他们的最新成就——比如那些令人毛骨悚然的人工智能新闻主播——能够说明问题的话，那么他们正在迅速取得进展。