A history of automated highway systems in Japan and future issues

This paper describes research activities on automated highway systems (AHS) since 1960´s conducted in Japan mainly in the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory (MEL) and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), the successor of MEL, under Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), and introduces a new project on AHS started in 2008 with the aim of energy saving or global warming prevention by METI. The research institute has been continuously conducting the research since 1960´s till now. The system in 1960´s employed inductive cable embedded under a roadway surface for lateral control, while the system in 1970´s was a vision-based one, which was extended to have an autonomous navigation function with dead reckoning in 1980´s. The autonomous navigation function was improved to use RTK-GPS and five autonomous vehicles linked with the inter-vehicle communication drove under flexible cooperative platooning in 2000. The AHS project started in 2008 will deal with a heavy truck platoon along an expressway, and a light truck along urban streets under mixed traffic. Besides the above activities, Japanese Ministry of Construction demonstrated AHS in 1995 and 1996 with magnetic markers on a roadway, and some automotive companies conducted research during 1990´s. Automated transit buses by Toyota, named IMTS (intelligent multimodal transit system), were operated on a theme park and at the World Fare in 2005 along a dedicated lane, and it was a very few case of AHS operated in a real world.