Toyota lleva a cabo pruebas pioneras de conducción automatizada en Bruselas para evaluar su capacidad de adaptación.
MADRID, 17 Nov.
Toyota Motor Europe has embarked on a new phase of testing for urban automated driving in Brussels with the aim of "better determining" how to adapt these systems in the real world, according to a company statement this Friday. Toyota's test vehicles will travel along a pre-selected route in Brussels until July 2024.
Toyota's new tests in Europe are intended to investigate the fragmentation of the Operational Design Domain (ODD) for future automated driving systems. The ODD specifies the operational limitations, such as perception range (including obstacles and turns at intersections), driver involvement, road type, speed, weather conditions, time of day, or other environmental circumstances, in which these systems can operate safely and continuously.
In particular, the new project aims to evaluate the performance of autonomous driving in complicated urban environments with limited visibility and unpredictable human behaviors, for which they expect the integration of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication to be one of the tools that make it possible.
In this regard, Toyota has pointed out that V2V has the potential to use wirelessly transmitted signals to convey information that is beyond the range of the sensors incorporated in vehicles. This, the company claims, helps "anticipate" various events on the road, navigating complex traffic patterns such as the sudden appearance of vehicles or pedestrians, roadwork, or other incidents.
The Japanese company will share the findings of these tests with the European project Hi-Drive, launched in July 2021 and financed by the European Commission, which brings together 53 entities from 13 EU countries with the common goal of developing automated driving from SAE Level 3 onwards.
Toyota is a consortium member of the project, and its R&D division joined the project motivated by the cultural diversity and traffic regulations of Europe, the project's intention to expand the operational design domain through technologies, and considering it a "great opportunity" to contribute to the European research community.