Mitsubishi Electric Field Tests Autonomous Vehicle

Mitsubish Electric’s xAuto autonomous vehicle. Photo: Mitsubishi Electric.

Mitsubishi Electric announced it has been conducting expressway-based field testing of its xAuto vehicle and related autonomous-driving technologies for self-sensing and network-based driving since May 2016.

Mitsubishi Electric branded its autonomous driving technologies under the name Diamond Safety. The self-sensing vehicle combines various peripheral-sensing technologies, including a forward-monitoring millimeter wave radar with wide viewing angle, a forward-monitoring camera and a backward side-monitoring millimeter wave radar. Its infrastructural driving technology uses high-accuracy 3D mapping in combination with a Centimeter-Level Augmentation Service (CLAS) broadcast from Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS).

Mitsubishi Electric carried out field tests of the xAuto and its autonomous driving technologies on two Japanese expressways: the Sanyo Expressway (Kobe junction to Ako interchange) and the Douo Expressway (Shibetsu Kenbuchi interchange to Fukagawa interchange) for more than 300 hours. According to the company, the tests confirmed that its autonomous driving technologies operate practically under various road conditions, including bad visibility during dense fog and snow.