Good afternoon everyone, my name is Okazaki, and I am the Managing Director of the AHS Research Association.
First of all, I would like to thank you all for finding the time in your busy schedules to attend todayfs symposium.
We have become used to the AHS symposium heralding the start of the summer, as in previous years it has always been held in June. However, it was decided to hold it a little later this year to coordinate with the Smartway 2007 demonstration.
Smartway 2007 attracted considerable attention when it was demonstrated recently at 14th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems technical sessions in Beijing. This is reflected in the number of overseas guests attending todayfs symposium. We would like to thank you all very much for making the considerable effort to join us.
So, I would like to first quickly introduce to you some of the recent activities of the AHS Research Association. First of all, a brief summary of the results of the safe driving support system field tests conducted at the Sangubashi curve section of the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway. The tested service provided drivers with information on unseen obstacles within and beyond the curve prior to entry into it. It was a long-term test lasting approximately a year, and was concluded in September 2006. The results confirmed it is an extremely effective road safety service. There was a significant reduction in the number of accidents targeted by the service, and in addition, this accident reduction effect did not diminish over the duration of the tests.
In addition, from May of this year a number of public road trials have been implemented on the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway, primarily: a service utilizing video analysis and ETC-LID to provide drivers with information on forward obstacles, using devices created and put in-place last year; a service to assist the smooth convergence of cars running on a main road with cars entering from a side road; and a safe driving support system utilizing car navigation devices. The drivers and other participants in these trials ranked each service extremely highly for both effectiveness and convenience. We will be able to take a closer look at the details of each service in the upcoming public demonstrations.
So far, AHS public road trials have mainly been conducted on the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway. However, cities such as Osaka and Nagoya have also expressed their interest in introducing AHS, and studies are currently underway towards the implementation of field trials on their respective expressways. We also anticipate field trials in the Kinki and Chubu regions to commence some time next year.
If you would take a look at your schedules at hand for todayfs symposium, you can see we will begin with introductory greetings from Mr. Tsukada, Director of the Office for the Promotion of ITS, Road Bureau, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. Next, Professor Akahane Hirokazu of the Chiba Institute of Technology will deliver todayfs key-note lecture, entitled Expectations Ahead of the Full-Scale Implementation of AHS. Then you will hear about the seven key AHS themes identified by our research association, and the latest research results and other relevant information on the efforts to commercially realize AHS and on each of the services under development.
This year we will be introduced to a substantial amount of technical information, and in addition, as the length of sessions has been considerably extended by four hours until 6pm, I suspect we are all going to be pretty tired by the end of the day. However, after listening to todayfs speakers talk about their R&D methods for AHS or their opinions on realizing commercial AHS services, please feel free to ask questions or make comments.
Finally, I would like to conclude my opening remarks by once again sincerely thanking you all for finding the time to attend todayfs symposium. |
