Nissan Vice President Takashi Yoshizawa: This is how we plan the development of autonomous driving | CICV 2018

Leifeng.com: On May 24, in Ningbo, Zhejiang, at the CICV 2018 Fifth Annual Intelligent Connected Vehicle Technology Conference hosted by the China Society of Automotive Engineers, Tsinghua University Suzhou Automotive Research Institute, Shanghai International Automobile City, and China Intelligent Connected Vehicle Industry Innovation Alliance, Takashi Yoshizawa, Global Director of the Renault-Nissan Alliance and Vice President of Nissan Motor, delivered a keynote speech entitled "Japan's Autonomous Driving Development Environment and Nissan's Current Development Status."

Takashi Yoshizawa is mainly responsible for ADAS and autonomous driving technology at Nissan. In his speech, he first introduced the current status of autonomous driving in Japan and the government's support for the development of autonomous driving. For example, in 2014, the government took the lead in establishing the SIP project. By March 2019, Japan will complete the high-precision mapping of all 29,000 kilometers of highways and dedicated lanes.

Afterwards, Yoshizawa Takashi focused on the development of Nissan's autonomous driving, from the development of ADAS functions 20 years ago to the first launch of single-lane full-speed autonomous driving technology in 2016. Nissan's plan is to achieve multi-lane highway autonomous driving functions by 2018, and then launch normal urban road autonomous driving functions after 2020.

Leifeng.com edited his speech without changing its original meaning. The following is the full text:

There are two topics I want to talk about today. The first is the Japanese government's work and leading role in autonomous driving technology, and the second is Nissan's achievements in technology development.

In the development of autonomous driving technology, the Japanese government has established an intelligent transportation system, or ITS. We have established an ITS map, which is guided by the Japanese government and is divided into two steps. The first step is to achieve L2 (SAE) level of autonomous driving for passenger cars, realize traffic service automation by 2020, and reach L4 level of autonomous driving on highways by 2025. Now, different vehicles are being tested on highways and urban roads.

The PPT contains data that has been released to the public. There are different types of fleet tests. The main testing units include city governments, Japanese universities, private enterprises and vehicle manufacturers. Nissan also participated in some road test projects.

The Japanese government organized the establishment of SIP (Innovation of Automated Driving for Universal Services), which is our strategic innovation promotion project. It mainly promotes collaborative research and development of key issues in autonomous driving systems, including human-machine interfaces, autonomous driving maps, high-definition maps and dynamic maps, as well as some basic technologies such as network information security.

Japan has established an autonomous driving map and dynamic map platform company called DMP. It was established with the joint support of vehicle manufacturers and map providers. Since 2017, it has been continuously improving its technology. By March 2019, all highways and dedicated lanes will be mapped, covering a total of 29,000 kilometers. The business scope of the DMP dynamic map platform includes map data correction and high-precision map construction. Vehicle manufacturers will use localization algorithms to generate high-precision maps in some areas.

20 years ago, Nissan had already introduced some basic ADAS technologies. Since the 1990s, brake control technology, ACC technology, and ICC technology have also been continuously developed. In fact, automatic cruise control is also an ADAS technology.

In 2000, ADAS basic technologies were further developed, especially lane keeping assist systems, lane departure warning systems, distance keeping systems, and forward collision warning systems, etc., which were all market-oriented technologies first developed in Japan. After 2010, these new technologies were continuously introduced.

Thanks to the basic technical contributions of brake control, lens and radar perception, Japan also launched the Serean and Note models, which also received the highest score and received the ASV++ score from the Japan New Car Safety Evaluation Association, which is a very advanced safety vehicle. The Japan Safety Evaluation Association evaluates the safety of anti-collision braking systems between vehicles and between vehicles and people, rear-view monitoring systems and lane keeping assist. We have maintained a high leading level in these areas.

Nissan has also launched its own new strategy, "MOVE to 2022", which is critical to our future success and includes three major technology areas. For example, Nissan has continuously deployed its leading position in electric vehicles and the expansion of autonomous driving technology in different brands, and will fully consider it in business development. As everyone knows, Nissan has in-depth cooperation with Renault in Europe and Mitsubishi, and our core technologies have been deeply developed in these alliances.

As I mentioned earlier, we have a long history of developing ADAS technology, especially some basic technologies. At the same time, we are also following Nissan's smart mobility strategy and gradually launching our own autonomous driving technology.

As a first step, we launched single-lane full-speed autonomous driving technology for the first time in 2016, with ICC support, including lane keeping assist from 0 to full speed. This technology has now been expanded to 5 models, mainly for the Japanese market, the US market and the European market. We expect that there will be 20 different modes in 20 markets.

On highways, multi-lane technology is also being developed and will soon be launched in the Japanese market. Next, we will look at urban roads and finally achieve fully autonomous driving.

Regarding the first step technology, we are very happy that we have received customer support and they have also accepted this technology. The first was launched in 2016 through the Serean model, with a total global sales of 120,000. Most of these cars were sold in Japan, 82% of Serean customers are Japanese, and now we are going to bring it to the world. Especially in Japan, 80% of Serean customers, and 77% of Note users, everyone's attitude towards it is very positive, because they really like to use this technology on the highway.

The success of our first step was mainly due to the excellent support from the verification system. During the design review, we also conducted simulations and actual road tests to ensure the safety of all driving scenarios.

These are some real-world tests we did on Japan's highways. Before the first launch in 2016, our team had conducted 100% highway testing. This took us several months, but was very important to us so that we could have a good understanding of what would actually happen on the road.

At the same time, we are also constantly trying to test the next plan. The video I shared with you is a test we conducted during the Tokyo Motor Show in October 2017. The vehicle meets different conditions and has 360-degree sensing capabilities, starting from urban roads, slowing down when passing through ETC toll booths, and then accelerating to enter the highway. Of course, this is just a test, we will continue to test, and once we can meet all these requirements, we will release it further.

Testing is very important, and we hope to test it globally, not just in Japan. We tested it in London and California last year, where there are different road conditions and traffic jams.