Nippon Paint Industrial Coatings/Provides paints that assist self-driving buses
Self-driving bus with sensors on the roof and self-driving paint painted on the route
Sensor monitor screen during automatic operation (top: paint reading, bottom: judgment status of obstacles, etc.)
Nippon Paint Industrial Coatings (Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, President Ken Shiotani) provided a special paint to assist the driving of self-driving buses operated at Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) in Fujisawa City, Kanagawa Prefecture. When the bus's laser sensor reads the special paint applied to the road surface on the route, the accuracy of estimating the position of the vehicle while driving increases. The company aims to popularize the system because it can be easily applied to existing roads and the construction costs can be kept low.
The company developed "Target Line Paint", a paint for autonomous driving, last year. Since it can be installed just by painting it on the road surface, it is characterized by a significant reduction in introduction and maintenance costs compared to existing autonomous driving support technologies such as embedding electromagnetic induction wires in the road. Autonomous driving is possible even in places where GPS (GPS) signals are difficult to reach, such as forests and built-up areas. In order to prevent misidentification with road markings, the color is the same as that of general asphalt.
Kanagawa Chuo Kotsu (Hiratsuka City, Kanagawa Prefecture, President Yasunori Hori) and Kanagawa University's SFC Research Institute jointly researched this paint and applied it to the driving system of the self-driving buses that operate on campus. The 2.2-kilometer route, excluding public roads, was painted on the premises. This is the first self-driving vehicle in the Kanto region using the same paint. At a test-ride event for the press held on the 6th, the bus ran smoothly without swaying to the left or right or unnaturally accelerating or decelerating while recognizing two strips of paint drawn in parallel in a dashed line.
Mr. Shuhei Hachiman, who is involved in business development at Nippon Paint Industrial Coatings, described the development process, saying, "I've been thinking about what paint technology can do for autonomous driving for several years." We anticipate demand from local governments and business operators who are interested in self-driving buses.
Manabu Ohmae, a professor at Keio University's Graduate School of Media and Governance, who is leading the research, said that after applying the paint in June, "The frequency with which the system requests to switch to manual driving has decreased." Realize. On the other hand, he also pointed out, "There is room for improvement as it is difficult to read when it is raining or snowing."
The company also provided the same paint to the demonstration test of an autonomous driving system jointly developed by Tsushima City, Nagasaki Prefecture, Shidax, and Meiji University in May.
