Osaka’s Shijonawate City brings in Soliton’s remote assist system to keep autonomous driving moving

Shijonawate City in Osaka Prefecture has started using Soliton’s autonomous driving remote assist system. The concept is straightforward and functional. A human operator remotely takes over when the vehicle encounters situations that it cannot completely assess by itself, such as overtaking a stationary car or determining when to yield to a car coming from the rear. The operator does not take over driving. They notify and advise the vehicle on the right operational decision, and autonomous driving continues.

Right now, the system is being demonstrated on residential roads across the area. The driving scenarios are not staged. The vehicle is handling everyday situations. Detouring around parked vehicles. Yielding to following vehicles on main roads. Checking safety before pulling out at stop signs. Confirming safety before departing from designated pickup and drop-off points.

The remote assistance operators are local volunteers. They have completed a certain level of training and all hold valid driver’s licenses. These operators rotate shifts and support the vehicle as needed. For this demonstration, the vehicle is operating at autonomous driving level 2. Safety personnel are on board the vehicle to handle final safety confirmation, including monitoring how the remote assistance system is working. The plan is to continue operations with remote assistance through early January next year.

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What makes this approach stand out is speed and cost. Remote assistance allows driverless-style operations to move forward using today’s autonomous driving technology. There is no need to wait for some future, perfect version of full autonomy. From a cost perspective, the same operator can also act as a remote monitoring operator at a centralized location. That means little to no additional investment is required.

Because of this, interest in remote assistance is growing quickly, both across Japan and internationally. It is being seen as a realistic and highly promising transportation solution, especially for local communities and regions where improving business viability is urgent.

Soliton says it will continue working to deliver autonomous driving systems that are both safe and commercially viable, by tightly linking autonomous driving with remote assistance, including its autonomous driving remote assistance systems.