Honda partners with transit authority to test autonomous vehicles

Honda has announced a joint venture with the Contra Costa Transportation Authority (CCTA) to test its driverless Acura RLX sedan at the Concord Naval Weapons Station in California. 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. GoMentum Station, a
April 2, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
1683 Honda has announced a joint venture with the 7945 Contra Costa Transportation Authority (CCTA) to test its driverless Acura RLX sedan at the Concord Naval Weapons Station in California.

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.

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 the site.

Honda will leverage modified versions of Acura's flagship RLX sedan for development and testing at GoMentum Station.  New, prototype sensors and cameras added to the vehicle will work hand-in hand with the 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, group lead for Systems Integration, Automated Vehicle Research, Honda Research Institute USA.  "This program will bring a new level of robustness to Honda's industry-leading efforts in the area of automated and connected vehicle technology."
Location Based Systems

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Cubic and University of Melbourne to partner on multimodal transport
    October 14, 2016
    Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS) and the University of Melbourne, Australia are to partner on the development of a National Connected Multimodal Transport (NCMT) test bed, which aims to deliver the first implementation of Cubic’s surface transport management solution worldwide. The NCMT test bed will be an urban laboratory capable of large-scale testing and implementation of emerging technologies in complex urban environments. The testing will explore ways to relieve pressures created by population gr
    Read More
  • Baidu to test autonomous cars in California
    September 2, 2016
    Baidu, which earlier this year announced the formation of an autonomous driving team in the US, Baidu USA, is to begin testing its autonomous technologies in California. The California Department of Motor Vehicles awarded the company an Autonomous Vehicle Testing Permit earlier this week.
    Read More
  • Praise for US DRIVE Act
    June 24, 2015
    The Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America) and the National League of Cities (NLC) have spoken in favour of the six-year surface transportation reauthorisation bill, the Developing a Reliable and Innovative Vision for the Economy (DRIVE) Act, introduced by US senators Jim Inhofe and Barbara Boxer and other members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The legislation is scheduled for a committee business meeting today. “I am proud of the bipartisan work that has culminat
    Read More
  • Interoperable electronic payment systems begin testing
    January 31, 2012
    OmniAir's Tim McGuckin writes about progress with the Electronic Payment Services National Interoperability Specification, which aims to provide the US with payment capabilities at lane level using any ETC component protocol. The OmniAir Consortium was founded to advance US national deployment of open, effective and interoperable transportation technology systems. Through its member-defined programmes, companies and individuals join to work for open standards, interoperability, third-party certification and
    Read More

Highlighted Content