Yamaha Motor and Tier IV have launch eve autonomy, a joint-venture company based in Shizuoka, Japan, that will develop an autonomous transportation service to help Yamaha Motor and other companies address chronic labor shortages and growing needs for high-mix low-volume production.
Starting this month, eve autonomy will begin offering easily implemented solutions that combine Tier IV’s Autoware, an open-source operating system for autonomous driving, and Yamaha Motor’s vehicle-body development technologies.
Envisioned subscription-type services and after-sales support will enable customer factories to respond nimbly to demand fluctuations and reduce their initial costs of implementation.
Yamaha Motor and Tier IV, which have jointly developed autonomous transportation services on a pilot basis, started to trial services on production lines last March at the former’s Hamakita Plant in Hamamatsu, as a step toward creating a smart factory.
eve autonomy is now taking over this pilot trial from its parent companies to provide the autonomous transportation service to Yamaha Motor manufacturing plants in Japan and overseas.
Next, the company plans to leverage the knowhow it gains in optimising the services at Yamaha Motor manufacturing plants to provide highly functional and reliable solutions to general customers.
Makoto Shimamoto, general manager of Yamaha Motor’s Mobility Technology Division, said eve autonomy will provide an autonomous transportation service for extra-efficient labor-saving production.
“By combining Yamaha Motor’s expertise in hardware and reliability with Tier IV’s speed and cutting-edge technologies, I believe we will create unprecedented value,” said Shimamoto.
Tier IV CTO Shinpei Kato said, his collaboration will be highly competitive on the global stage.
“By combining the expertise of our joint team and the capabilities of our Autoware, we aim to revolutionise autonomous transportation services,” said Kato. “With the tough times the world is currently facing, we will do our best to provide something positive.”
