While it is usually the most unusual gizmos and gadgets that highlight Japan’s Ceatec, some of the most interesting devices at recent iterations of the show featured something unusual: wheels. While Japan’s Tokyo Motor Show has always been a haven for tech-riddled concept machines, many companies are choosing to show off their forward-thinking rides at Ceatec, which takes place a few weeks earlier and is attended by virtually every major Japanese company in the technology space.
In 2013 it was the auto companies taking up more space than any other. Even Sony’s massive booth paled in comparison to the sprawling driving loop Nissan used to demonstrate its Autonomous Drive Vehicle — an all-electric Leaf wizened up and able to navigate roads by itself. The company showed a similar concept last year, a Leaf that could park itself and had cameras that an owner could connect to remotely should the alarm go off. This year’s edition, though, was quite an upgrade.
The 2013 version has five new laser scanners, one facing in each of the four directions plus a second looking up front for extra fidelity. These create a 3D map of the environment 25 times per second, letting the car know what’s going on around it. They’re augmented by a forward-looking camera that identifies road markings. With five sensors scanning and a Windows 8-powered computer parsing all the data, the car is quite capable of driving itself. On the Ceatec floor the car offered a test drive through a simple figure eight, yielding to another vehicle at one point before later safely passing it.
The modified Leaf also came to a complete stop at intersections and even used its turn signals, which is more than we can say for many human drivers. Passengers inside the car are treated to a real-time display of the laser scanners’ findings, with boxes and lines that identify trouble. It was a limited demo limited by floor space, but Nissan’s video footage showed the same car driving autonomously at up to 70 kph (about 45 mph), a speed that the makers have deemed fast enough for now. This is, of course, just testing the water for Nissan’s future autonomous cars, which the company estimates will be on the market by 2020. Nissan has some sizable challenges to overcome between now and then. For one thing, the car’s laser scanners don’t work in heavy rain or fog. Additionally, the car is completely flummoxed by roundabouts. Japan, you see, doesn’t have any.
