Mitsubishi to exhibit autonomous-driving vehicle xAUTO

Japan’s Mitsubishi Electric (Mitsubishi) is all set to unveil its xAUTO vehicle, as well as autonomous-driving technologies for self-sensing and network-based driving.

The xAUTO will be exhibited during the 45th Tokyo Motor Show 2017 at the Tokyo Big Sight exhibition complex in Tokyo, Japan, from 27 October to 5 November.

The Japanese firm has been carrying out field tests of the xAUTO vehicle and its autonomous driving technologies on two Japanese expressways since May last year.

Test results suggested that Mitsubishi Electric’s autonomous driving technologies can operate practically under various road conditions, including bad visibility during dense fog and snow.

The company has named its autonomous driving technologies as ‘Diamond Safety’, which has been developed under the concept of ‘Thinking of people at any time’.

"Test results suggested that Mitsubishi Electric’s autonomous driving technologies can operate practically under various road conditions, including bad visibility during dense fog and snow."

Mitsubishi noted that its self-sensing driving technology is a combination of wide-range of peripheral-sensing technologies, including forward-monitoring millimetre-wave radar with wide viewing angle, a forward-monitoring camera and backward side-monitoring millimetre-wave radar.

The driving technology makes use of 3D mapping in combination with a centimetre-level augmentation service (CLAS) broadcast from the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS).

CLAS-based autonomous driving technology on the expressway has the potential to handle real-time traffic situations on the road.

Claimed to be the world’s first field test of CLAS-based autonomous driving on expressway, the technology has improved.

In areas such as tunnels where CLAS reception is difficult, autonomous driving became a possibility with high-definition location technology to find out the vehicle’s exact position in real time along with several sensors that monitored the vehicle’s motion, and a forward-monitoring camera.