Honda’s US unit said it had commenced testing of its automated and connected vehicle technology at the Concord Naval Weapons Station (CNWS) in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Under the terms of an agreement reached with the Contra Costa Transportation Authority (CCTA) in conjunction with the City of Concord, Honda will use the newly branded ‘GoMentum Station’ test bed site at the CNWS to advance its technologies. Honda also plans to participate in a consortium committed to making Contra Costa County home to a premier testing facility for automated drive technologies.
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GoMentum Station, a 5,000-acre facility, is the largest secure test bed of its kind, located at the CNWS. The CNWS was officially closed in 2007 and is currently in the process of being transferred to the City of Concord. GoMentum Station contains 20 miles of paved, city-like roadway grids, buildings and other urban infrastructure, providing a realistic environment that will help accelerate the development of automated and connected vehicle technologies. The public will not have access to the test bed site, and the automated vehicle testing will be restricted to GoMentum Station.
Honda will use modified versions of the flagship Acura RLX sedan for development and testing at the station. New, prototype sensors and cameras added to the vehicle will work with the extensive array of forward, reverse and corner sensors that enable a suite of AcuraWatch safety and driver assistive technologies on the production RLX.
“The Concord Naval Weapons Station is an ideal proving ground to augment Honda’s research and development efforts because it is a controlled environment that can be continuously modified to represent a wide array of settings that an automated vehicle must navigate, especially for urban operation,” said Paul Cummings, head of systems iIntegration, automated vehicle research at the Honda Research Institute USA.
Reuters reported that Daimler’s Mercedes is also using the Concord facility to test autonomous vehicles.
Other companies, from Delphi to Google have been testing prototype self-driving cars on public roads.
Delphi on Tuesday concluded a 3,500-mile cross-country drive in a specially equipped Audi SQ5 designed to pilot itself on main highways and freeways.
The report said Google had tested heavily modified versions of the Toyota Prius and the Lexus RX450h on streets near its headquarters in Mountain View, California. The company, which has said it could have a fully autonomous car ready for production within five years, also is testing a small two-passenger driverless ‘pod’ car on a private track in northern California.
