From cognitive gap to innovation synergy: public cognitive evolution law and implications in the new unmanned-driven business model.

The rapid advancement of digital technology provides core support for the iterative evolution of new business formats across industries. In the field of unmanned driving, the industry is undergoing a critical upgrade from assisted driving technology application to unmanned vehicle operation mode. The identification of challenges and large-scale promotion of this new business model highly depend on the public’s cognitive evaluation and emotional attitude. Thus, a systematic analysis of the public’s focus areas and attitude levels toward the new unmanned driving model holds significant practical value for advancing technology implementation and healthy industrial development. From the cognitive gap perspective, this study selects public comments from the “Apollo Go” platform as samples via text data mining. Combined with the division of public opinion communication life cycle stages, it integrates BERTopic topic modeling and BERT-BiLSTM sentiment analysis models to deconstruct the phased evolutionary characteristics of media and public opinion. It explores the mechanism of social opinion shaping public cognition and reveals the dynamic evolution of public cognitive gap in unmanned driving—from formation and fluctuation to mitigation, i.e., the gap gradually dissolves and transforms into innovative synergy. Ultimately, by integrating Diffusion of Innovations theory, this study theoretically clarifies the resolution mechanism of cognitive gaps and proposes a three-level innovation synergy strategy, thereby providing important academic basis and decision-making references for accelerating the social integration of new unmanned driving business models.