Just one step away from full autonomy…
“We will strive to achieve the technological establishment of Level 4 automated driving for personal car use by around 2025.” Those were the words said by the President and CEO of Honda, Mr. Takahiro Hachigo, at a media event in the brands’ home market of Japan.
While the company has stated that it’ll have semi-autonomous driving technology in its cars by 2020, the 2025 deadline means that Honda is giving itself an additional 5-years to perfect the system to the point where it will be able to handle itself almost entirely. Following in the footsteps of more established autonomous-driving players, Honda’s self-driving cars are fitted with an assortment of cameras, radar, and LiDAR sensors, which earns them a Level 3 autonomy rating.
The differences between Level 3 are considerable: While Level 3 is meant to allow cars to pilot themselves on the motorway, they also require drivers to be constantly ready to take back control should it be needed. Level 4 will permit drivers to completely relinquish control of the vehicle while on the road, as it pilots itself on highways and most city roads through most conditions.
"We are striving to provide our customers with a sense of confidence and trust by offering automated driving that will keep vehicles away from any dangerous situation and that will not make people around the vehicle feel unsafe,” said CEO Hachigo. Japanese carmakers have taken a relatively relaxed approach to the autonomy race, preferring to work steadily on their piloting software rather than devoting heinous amounts of resources to the technology.
While Honda may already have its ‘Sensing’ suite of advanced driver assistance systems, Nissan believes that its ProPilot system will be capable of Level 4 autonomy by 2020, when Tokyo will play host to the Olympics. That said, with Honda cooperating with Google subsidiary Waymo to develop autonomous driving tech, it’s still too early to determine who will come up tops. Honda has made it clear though that for Level 4 autonomy, it has to fine-tune its artificial intelligence technology, which will be crucial in allowing self-driving Hondas to make the critical decisions that, thus far, only a human driver can make.
