Taisei and TIER IV Partner on Autonomous Transport Demonstration for Japanese Government

Taisei Corporation, TIER IV, Inc., and Taisei Rotec Corporation have been selected by Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) for a demonstration project focused on accelerating the deployment of the Autoflow Road. This system is designed to transport cargo using unmanned, automated vehicles within purpose-built logistics lanes.

The demonstration will evaluate multi-vehicle autonomous operations, including platooning, bidirectional driving, lane changes, merging and diverging maneuvers, and obstacle avoidance within tunnel environments and other dedicated spaces. The companies will also test simplified requirements for automotive sensors and roadside infrastructure optimized for these dedicated lanes. Taisei Corporation's self-localization support technology, T-Localizer®, will be validated.

TIER IV's autonomous driving system, Pilot.Auto, developed for logistics applications, will be assessed for its adaptability and scalability. This project is part of Japan's broader initiative to advance automated logistics and transportation infrastructure.

The insights gained from this project are intended to clarify the respective roles of vehicle autonomy and road infrastructure, laying the groundwork for a lean and scalable deployment of the Autoflow Road system.