Bridgestone Corp. has invested in Tier IV, an open-source Autoware autonomous driving operating system as part of the “Green Innovation Fund Projects” (GI Fund) for research and development of autonomous driving software platforms. Through the Green Autonomous Driving (AD) Project, TIER IV aims to achieve 100 times higher energy efficiency than the currently deployed technology for autonomous vehicles, Bridgestone says.
Leveraging the partnership with Bridgestone, Sompo Holdings and Yamaha Motor, Tier IV plans to accelerate its business through collaborations. With Bridgestone, Tier 4 plans to conduct testing, verification and validation of autonomous vehicles.
The Japanese government established the GI Fund at a scale of $15 billion, with the goal to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050. Tier IV was accepted to the GI Fund’s program, “Microautonomy – Creating Collectively Scalable Autonomous Driving Systems.”
Microautonomy is a concept of software platforms, in which open technology components can be combined adaptively under given timing constraints to build affordable autonomous vehicles in a dependable manner.