Autonomous A2Z has started a pilot of an autonomous taxi service in Japan through a local taxi company. Autonomous A2Z said on Thursday it will provide its technology to an autonomous taxi pilot project in Naruto, Tokushima Prefecture.

The pilot is jointly led by Tokushima Prefecture, NEC and Denno Kotsu. It will run for about 2 months until March 31 on public roads in western Naruto. The company will deploy a Hyundai Motor Ioniq 5 equipped with a Level 4 autonomous driving system. The goal is to verify service stability and technology reliability by operating autonomous taxis.

The pilot follows a business agreement A2Z signed in August last year with Japanese general trading company Kanematsu. Kanematsu, as A2Z's Japan business partner, pushed the pilot forward. A2Z has experience driving 82 autonomous vehicles for 940,000 km across 14 cities and provinces including Seoul, Gyeongju and Hadong, and is also running pilots in Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.

The autonomous taxis will operate free of charge on set routes centered on 27 pickup and drop-off points including Tokushima Awaodori Airport. Operating hours are daily from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Users can request the service as a call taxi via the same phone number used for regular taxis. Local taxi operator Passenger Soft Co. will handle operations. A safety driver will be on board and able to intervene at any time.

A hybrid operations management model has been applied, linking A2Z's autonomous driving control system, NEC's autonomous driving service platform and Denno Kotsu's dispatch system. It is designed to integrate management of regular taxis and autonomous vehicles at the same dispatch center. It increases human and physical efficiency by allowing autonomous vehicles to be added while maintaining existing taxi company work practices.

A2Z plans to use the pilot cooperation with Kanematsu to build an autonomous taxi deployment model suited to the environment of regional taxi operators in Japan. The company plans to introduce autonomous driving technology as regional transport infrastructure and apply it to public transport systems including buses and shuttles. It will also pursue the introduction of Level 4 fully driverless autonomous vehicles in Tokushima Prefecture.

Autonomous A2Z CEO Jihyeong Han (한지형) said the Naruto autonomous taxi pilot is a meaningful case of validating autonomous driving services in a real transport environment through cooperation with local partners in Japan. He said it was a big help that the company preemptively developed autonomous driving software optimized for right-hand-drive vehicles through K-City, which the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the Korea Automobile Testing and Research Institute under the Korea Transportation Safety Authority opened free of charge. Han said A2Z will step by step verify an autonomous driving service model that fits Japan's transport environment and regulations based on pilot experience and operational know-how accumulated in Korea and overseas.