In the field of self-driving cars, Japanese companies are being left in the dust of their US rivals, including Waymo LLC of Google operator Alphabet Inc. and General Motors affiliate GM Cruise Holdings.
However, a Nagoya University startup is throwing its hat in the ring using a unique strategy.
Tier IV Inc. is contemplating a business plan that offers its software for free, in principle, to encourage more companies to use its self-driving technologies.
Shinpei Kato, chief technical officer of the company who studied autonomous driving at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, founded the Nagoya-based company.
“The value of software will continue to rise. We want to enhance the system capabilities and increase sales,” Kato said.
Tier IV purchased a chassis from automakers to develop an autonomous driving system.
Automakers were brought together in late September for a trial experiment on their self-driving cars along Tokyo’s Aomi waterfront. The vehicles were used for demonstration rides as part of the government-led Strategic Innovation Promotion (SIP) program.
One of the vehicles was a taxi equipped with eight sensors, including high-performance light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors, and a dozen or so cameras to monitor the surrounding environment and remotely supervise the vehicle.
A driver was sitting behind the wheel in case of emergency as the taxi drove for about 30 minutes autonomously.
Although at one point the vehicle could not recognize an oncoming car, prompting the driver to take the wheel, the taxi made it to its destination without much difficulty.
The taxi was installed with the Tier IV-developed operating system Autoware. The software recognizes the surroundings and operates the vehicle depending on the situation.
The software developer has received many inquiries from bus and taxi companies faced with serious labor shortages.
Kato became an associate professor at Nagoya University to continue his research in the Chubu region, an auto industry hub, and developed self-driving software.
Auto companies have put software development on the backburner as they focus on hardware performance to improve the stopping, driving and turning abilities of vehicles.
However, electric vehicles are more simply structured than traditional gasoline-powered cars.
It is said there will be fewer factors left to determine the performance of self-driving EVs in terms of hardware.
Instead, with autonomous driving technologies being developed, there is an ever-increasing need for software.
The company was named Tier IV because it wants to become a new presence independent from any entity, instead of settling for being Tier 1, 2 or 3 suppliers in the auto industry, according to a publicist.
Conventionally, the auto industry has a pyramid structure, with carmakers taking the lead and placing orders for auto parts with subcontracting suppliers.
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