First Look: Honda's Self-Driving Car

Honda demoed its autonomous vehicle technology at an abandoned weapons station in California.

CONCORD, Calif.—Except for the scurrying of jackrabbits and leaves rustling in the hot breeze, it was deathly quiet among the abandoned buildings and empty bunkers of a 5,000-acre former military weapons storage facility here yesterday morning.

Suddenly, a black Acura RLX roared into view just as a Honda engineer appeared seemingly out of nowhere to cross the street right in front of the sedan. But the Acura abruptly stopped, despite the fact that the driver had his hands in the air and his feet nowhere near the brake pedal. Annoyed, the jackrabbits scurried away.

So began a rare public demonstration of self-driving car technology from Honda, an automaker that has kept relatively quiet about its autonomous vehicle ambitions compared to Toyota and Google.

But Honda is serious about driverless cars: its testbed is packed with cameras, sensors, and AI algorithms. To put them through their paces, the company transformed part of the abandoned weapons facility here into a model city, where it can simulate pretty much any urban traffic fiasco in a controlled environment.

The car first uses radar and lasers to detect potential road obstacles. Its cameras then scan the objects to determine whether they're pedestrians, cars, or, say, a jackrabbit. That information is sent for processing to several GPUs and CPUs inside the car, which tell the motor, brakes, and steering how best to avoid the obstacle.

After the engineer safely crossed the road (yes, there's an actual answer to "why did the Honda engineer cross the road?"), the car drove to the end of the block, stopped at a stop sign, activated its turn signal, waited for yet another engineer to cross at the crosswalk, and made a right turn.

On the next block, it was presented with a more difficult obstacle: a mannequin set up in the middle of the road, which obviously refused to move. The Acura somewhat clumsily swerved to avoid it without slowing down in what looked like a close call, but the mannequin escaped unscathed. After two more turns, the car returned to its starting point, having successfully completed the quarter-mile test course.

Yet the demonstration left one big question unanswered (two if you're curious about what the ride quality is like with a couple GPUs behind the wheel): Why hasn't the general public seen the sensor-laden Acura in their neighborhoods? Google, for instance, has famously tested its self-driving technology on public roads, shrugging off a few embarrassing collisions along the way.

Honda said it does have a license to test its autonomous RLX on public roads in California. But as the company's chief R&D engineer Jim Keller put it, "we need all the testing facilities we can get."

"There's much that can be gleaned from testing on public roads," he said, but it's often more practical to teach AI algorithms with repeated testing in controlled situations.

That's why the decommissioned weapons station, dubbed "GoMentum" by the local transit agency that manages it, is the perfect spot. Its derelict road signs and dilapidated pavement, numerous intersections, railroad crossings, and tunnels mirror the state of the modern American road network.

Eventually, GoMentum will be transformed into housing developments, parks, and schools. For now, the Contra Costa Transportation Authority is extolling its retro advantages to any automaker that will listen. Honda has been testing there for nine months, following Mercedes-Benz's decision to pull out of the project.

It's also testing at sites in Japan and Michigan, and thefruits of its labor are already available to average motorists in the form of Honda Sensing and AcuraWatch. They include features like lane-departure warnings, adaptive cruise control, and the upcoming Traffic Jam Assist, which Keller said will be available later this year and help avoid rear-end collisions in stop-and-go congestion.

As for fully autonomous driving, its commercial availability will depend as much on regulatory reformas it will on engineering prowess. Along the way, Honda appears committed to ensuring that no jackrabbits, engineers, or mannequins are harmed in the making of its self-driving car.