A ride to the future
Next to Jean-Eric Paquet, from left to right, are Patricia Flor - Ambassador of the European Union to Japan, Jonas Ambeck-Madsen - Autonomous Driving and AI manager at Toyota Motors Europe, and Koh Narukawa - Vice President Research and Development at Toyota Motors Europe.
On Wednesday 29 January, our Director-General used an unconventional means of transport to get to the Berlaymont: the automated L3 pilot version of a Toyota Lexus doing a test drive in the European Quarter.
The test drive took place after a meeting with Patricia Flor, the EU's ambassador to Japan. She visited our DG as a follow-up to Jean-Eric's trip to Japan in October 2019 where he met representatives from Toyota to discuss, among other things, the Toyota prototype vehicle from that is part of the Horizon 2020-funded L3Pilot project.
Automated driving as a safe and efficient means of transportation
The goal of this project is to test the viablilty of automated driving as a safe and efficient means of transportation on public roads. The focus is on large-scale piloting of Society of Automotive Engineers Level 3 functions, with additional assessment of some Level 4 functions.
The functionality of these systems will be exposed to variable conditions with 1,000 drivers and 100 cars across ten European countries, including cross-border routes. In Brussels the Urban Automated Driving application is being tested. The purpose is to evaluate the automated driving capability under complex real life conditions and improve the algorithms.
The test drives are already a familiar sight in the European Quarter in Brussels. As of 10 July 2019, a heavily equipped Lexus started to drive a fixed route (Rue de la Loi, Rue de Commerce, Rue Belliard, Avenue de la Joyeuse Entrée, Shuman roundabout) between 10.00 and 15.00 (to avoid the peak hours) and has done this in automated mode for approximately 170 hours by now.
The goal is to attain 600 hours by summer 2020. The amount of data that will be collected is massive, consisting of approximately 5 Terabyte per day.
So next time you see this vehicle outside the ORBN building you will know that it is not Google Earth out filming with all its strange contraptions on the roof. It is the future coming to a road near you.
