Day1 (Nov. 13, 2019) of the Design Festival started with the opening address by Yuji Ito, CEO and President of FORUM8. Then "the 4th Autonomous Driving Conference" was opened up by the special lecture "METI's involvement to realize automated driving" by Kenji Ueki, Director, ITS and Autonomous Driving Promotion Office, Automobile Division, Manufacturing Industries Bureau, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). First, he summarized the points about the big wave of changes that the automobiles industry faces such as connected cars and electric motorization, positioning of automated driving, its significance brought about in road traffic and industrial society, and the concept of the automated driving system. After mentioning the definition of automated driving levels (Level 0 to 5), he explained the situation in Japan that currently level 2 and below are admitted and that level 3 and below are going to be admitted institutionally from May 2020. Moreover, he mentioned advancing technologies for drive assist as well as efforts on Level 4 commercial vehicles. Next, he presented requirements for realizing automated driving and the whole image of what should be done for it by the government and industries. In specific, he expounded the field of cooperation among the concerned parties such as METI's works on them from the aspects of technologies and industrialization, development of minimum map data, and human resource development in IT for cyber security measures. Furthermore, as approaches to the goal stipulated in the government's Growth Strategy, he summarized the present situation and the future schedule of the demonstration projects of mobile services by automated driving and convoy traveling. In addition, regarding the Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP) led by Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, as demonstrations in Tokyo Waterfront area in particular, he also presented the outline of the demonstration projects in Odaiba district, Haneda district, and Metropolitan expressway that connect these districts.

Mr. Kenji Ueki, Director of Autonomous Driving and ITS Promotion Office, Automobile Division, Manufacturing Industries Bureau, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry

Next, Mr. Naohiko Ogihara, Director, Land Mobile Communications Division, Radio Department, Telecommunications Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) gave a lecture entitled "Trends and MIC's involvement towards the achievement of automated driving". Firstly, from the aspect that Japan is "an advancing country in challenging aging society, he mentioned utilization of automated driving as its solution, an impact to the communication environment that the 5th Generation Mobile Communications Systems (5G) brings about, the scenario of spreading automated driving based on them, and expectation for marketing Logistics services and mobility services. Then, he expounded the demonstration project of research and development about communications infrastructure of which the ministry takes responsibility toward promotion of ITS, work on international standardization that also reflects the outcome of the project, development of domestic institution that also takes consideration of foreign trends, and international expansion of the domestic outcome. In specific, while mentioning utilization of communication that supports automated driving, and road-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-vehicle communication technology that is going to be required for realizing automated driving for the time being, he talked about tests for providing institution in terms of communication regarding automated driving that MIC works on, research and development of appropriate collection and utilization of information needed according to the scale of zone, and the demonstration of Japan's ITS radio system in India. Furthermore, he explained evolution of the mobile communication systems, advantages of 5G that is ultra-low latency and various changes it brings about to the industrial society, actions of Japan, the United States, China, Korea, and Europe for realizing 5G, allotment of frequency that MIC is dealing with, 5G-related demonstration experiments including high speed mobility and convoy travel of trucks, and other activities on which to place weights in the future.　

Mr. Naohiko Ogihara, Director of Mobile Satellite Communications Division, Radio Department, Telecommunications Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications

As the last speaker of the morning session, Mr. Katsuya Abe, Director, ITS Policy and Program Office, Road Traffic Control Division, Road Bureau, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) gave a special lecture "MLIT Road Bureau's involvement in automated driving". At the beginning, he introduced some problems such as aging and population decline of hilly and mountainous areas or decline of public transportation, along with the various functions of "Michinoeki (roadside stations)" to solve them. He said that these circumstances made the Bureau pay attention to automated driving as a solution to the concerned area, and that how they became to get involved in demonstration based in multiple "Michinoeki (roadside stations)". He also described the social experiments of automated driving services carried out as part of it with the budget aid of SIP support using video. He then explained that there were cases of manual intervention and stopping during automated driving performed based on these experiments. He detailed the causes of these cases and analysis of problems on the side of infrastructure, acceptability research for the users of the automated driving vehicles, and so on. Moreover, he described the aims of introducing automated driving vehicles to compensate public transport, its profitability as a business model by the paid volunteers who utilize the system of onerous passenger transportation with private vehicles, and efforts on the standpoint of infrastructure through "the study meeting on the road space supporting automated driving". Finally, he also mentioned the ongoing efforts including: 1) Advancement of the snow plow truck in consideration of automated driving, 2) Supporting automated driving by providing information at the merging section of expressway, 3) Providing read-ahead information, 4) Collecting of three-dimensional (3D) data by the in-vehicle sensing technology in connection with dynamic map, and 5) Generating and providing road traffic information at the lane level.

Mr. Katsuya Abe, Chief of ITS Policy and Program Office, Road Traffic Management Office, Road Bureau, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism

From the afternoon, Mr. Keiji Furuya, member of the House of Representatives (and President of ”Parliamentary group for considering Automobile Culture” and so on) gave a guest greeting. Based on his own experience, he emphasized the importance of collaboration among the concerned ministries and agencies towards realizing automated driving, expectation of spreading 5G all over the nation, and advantages of putting automated driving to practical use especially in the depopulated countryside. Furthermore, he mentioned 5 important points for these: 1) Technological development, 2) Infrastructure Improvement, 3) Stipulating rules including international rules, 4) Building up environment for positive use in the society, and 5) Public-private collaboration.

Mr. Keiji Furuya, President of "Parliamentary group for considering Automobile Culture" / Member of the House of Representatives FORUM8 sponsored K4-GP (August 13, 2019).

The afternoon session started with Mr. Takahiro Hirasawa, Director of Automated Driving Strategy Office, Engineering Policy Division, Road Transport Bureau, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), giving a special lecture entitled "Activities related to automated driving in the automotive field". First, he summarized the significance of automated driving, the goals of the whole government based on Public-Private ITS Initiative/Roadmaps, and activities to achieve them made by collaboration among industry, government and academia. Then, as the action of MLIT, he outlined three central points that Autonomous Driving Strategy Headquarters (established in 2016) holds up towards realization of automated driving: 1) Environmental arrangement such as standards, liability, and the three-dimensional geographical spatial information infrastructure, 2) Development and promotion of automated driving technologies such as vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-road coordination, 3) Automated driving services such as Last Mile or "the Michinoeki (roadside stations)", demonstration / social validation of convoy traveling of trucks etc. He also explained the following items in detail. 1) Main points of the latest version of "Safety technology guideline of autonomous vehicles", 2) Partial revision of "Road Transport Vehicle Act" (established in May 2019), 3) List of matters of priority to consider to prepare international standards for autonomous vehicles (agreed in The UNECE World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations (WP.29) of the United Nations in March 2019), 4) Examination of the method for motor vehicle inspection using OBD: On-board diagnostics, 5) "Guideline for passenger automobile transport business to secure safety and convenience in the mobility service by automated driving within the limited area" (formulated in June 2019), 6) Promotion of "safety support car s", 7) Demanding estimate budget regarding automated driving technologies for the 2020 fiscal year, and 8) Demonstration automated driving regarding Last Mile automated driving or convoy traveling of trucks.

Mr. Takahiro Hirasawa, Director of Autonomous Driving Strategy Office / Engineering Policy Division Road Transport Bureau, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism

The last special lecture for the Conference was "NPA's involvement in automated driving" by Mr. Toshihiro Sugi, Director, Autonomous Driving Planning Office, Traffic Planning Division, Traffic Bureau, National Police Agency (NPA). As the background of the involvement, started to talk about the change in the number of road accident fatalities, and the characteristics of the share of the number of road accident fatalities by situation and age group. He further talked about the levels of automation of driving as its solution, and the flow for realizing the level 3 (2020) and the level 4 (2025) on the expressways based on the road map of Japan. He also mentioned expectation towards reduction of accidents and mitigation of congestion, which are the effects to be brought about by automated driving, as well as the concept of its early practical application as the Agency. As a concrete action of the Agency, he expounded the following items. 1) Environmental arrangement for public-road demonstration tests based on "Guidelines for public road demonstration of automated driving systems " (2016), "Standards for handling application for permission to use roads regarding public-road demonstration tests of the remote controlled automated driving system" (2017), revision of the "Standards for admission to use roads regarding demonstration tests of autonomous driving" (Sept. 2019); 2) Formulation of traffic rules including driving operation and other obligation except operation towards environmental arrangement on the level 3 aimed to be fulfilled by 2020, based on the roadmap regulated in "Outline of system development for automated driving systems" (April 2018); 3) Research and development about provision of signaling information and V2X (vehicle-to-everything) information through SIP, as well as research and development for practical application of the automated driving system including the demonstration tests in Tokyo Waterfront Areas; 4) Calling for attention to the concerned people for securing safety in the process of practical application of driving support systems (e.g. prevention of overconfidence).

Mr. Toshihiro Sugi, Director of Autonomous Driving Planning Office, Traffic Planning Division, Traffic Bureau, National Police Agency

After these lectures, the first half of the morning session ended with "the Virtual Reality Design Studio UC-win/Road Presentation" by FORUM8 staff. In the first part, entitled "Utilization and future vision of VR for automated driving, ADAS, mobility R&D, and training", he summarized the shift in solutions over the past year. He introduced the audience the release of UC-win/Road Ver.14 (latest version), the new representation function of UC-win/Road and link with various devices and technologies, line up expansion of the DS, system recent development and application cases of VR in and out of the nation. He also mentioned other matters such as examples of the real-time environment system, expansion using a Japan-made cross-platform game engine “Chidori”, AR solution, and Shade3D Ver20. As the future prospects, he talked about support / expansion for real-time environments or the latest device, performance optimization, as well as extension for the open format.

Japan-made cross-platform game engine Chidori ●FORUM8 takes over copyright of Japan-made game engine Chidori● Example of a service using Chidori Engine Sign language dictionaries to learn in games

Finally, from the viewpoint of the person in charge of development, he made a presentation entitled "New functions and new developments of UC-win/Road". Using demonstration, he explained new functions of "UC-win/Road Ver.14" (released in Nov 2019) about simulation link and rendering, functions under development, the direction of future development, and so on.

UC-win/Road Ver.14 New Functions Shader customization Segmentation by object selection Object Detectiopn Plug-in Option Rendering of 360-degree image

In the second half of the afternoon session, award-giving ceremony for "the 18th 3DVR Simulation Contest on Cloud" was held. Out of a large number of submitted works by Oct. 8, 12 works were nominated through the meeting for selecting nomination works on Oct. 15.Public voting on Cloud (Public voting via VR-Cloud(R) for these works was held from Nov. 1 to 10. Adding the results of this, prizes were determined by the Examining meeting held on Nov. 12 (at Headquarters of FORUM8) composed of Fumio Seki, Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, College of Science and Technology, Nihon University and Chief of the judging committee; and judges including Hiroo Kasagi, Representative of NPO Chiikizukuri Kobo, and Tatsuoki Inagaki, Director, State of the Art Technologies Expression Association.

Juries (from left) Prof. Fumio Seki (Chief of Judging Committee) Mr. Hiroo Kasagi, Mr. Tatsuoki Inagaki	Award winners

As a result, Grand Prix went to TUMS Urayasu Hospital for "Safety driving diagnosis simulator". This is designed to make objective evaluation of the degrees of danger and safety of driving training and driving for the patients of higher brain dysfunction. It evaluates the manipulation under the situations where difficulties are anticipated, such as overspeed, passing the stop line, and reverse parking by degree of difficulty. It allows the user to express the results in graphs and compare them, and confirm the history. It is going to be utilized as the final data for judgement for approving driving actual vehicles. It is also evaluated for its novel approach of VR to the medical field (Prof. Seki).

Excellence Award (Semi Grand Prix) was awarded to East Nippon Expressway Company Limited for "VR experience type training system". VR contents for training were produced for the purpose of learning fundamental knowledge about pavement of expressways, bridges, and earthworks. Fundamental structures of civil engineering facilities, flow of execution, damage mechanism, and countermeasures against ground subsidence etc. are represented by VR. By using 3D projectors or HMD, it allows the user to have bodily experiences with sense of reality about the inner structures as well as changes in the underground that cannot be seen actually. It was evaluated for the point that a new way of training about work processes is presented, with expectation for the future development (Mr. Inagaki).

Just Published Book That Meets the Needs for Expertise or Practical Know-how, and Author's Thought

FORUM8 Publishing published 4 books, matching the timing to the Design Festival of this time. At the end of the Day 1 session, lectures were given by the authors and supervisors of 3 of those books. Author of "100 Greatest Bridges", Mr. Yosihisa Hanamura who represents NPO Civil Machizukuri Station and serves as its board member started his lecture with the activities of himself and others, which have been focusing on connecting administration and citizens through assistance and education of town planning. At the same time, they have been writing a series of articles in the PR magazine of FORUM8 "Up & Coming" entitled the same title of the concerned book, using photographs of bridges taken by the NPO members spreading all over the nation since its foundation in 2002. When 47 prefectures of Japan had been covered in the articles, it was planned to publish the series as a book. At that time, they picked up 4 to 5 pieces from each prefecture by inviting application in order to publish "Bridges that citizens select", bridges that residents are familiar with in their life and are historically and technologically important, reflecting their own idea. The contents of the book is roughly divided into two parts. The former part is a collection of photographs, in which photographs of bridges are arranged with explanation of regions and the concerned bridges. The latter part is so organized as to provide the history and technical knowledge about bridges. He says that they designed the book for general readers to enjoy reading it while getting expertise.

Mr. Yoshihisa Hanamura, NPO Civil Machizukuri Station

Next, the author of "Shade3D Official Guidebook 2020", Masanao Sasabuchi, Shade3D Development Group Chief Manager of FORUM8 gave a speech. He said that while there were introductory books about Shade3D or technical books for skilled users so far, there was actually no appropriate book that meet the demand of the users who are able to operate it to a certain degree and want to know deeper contents. On the other hand, they open to the public "Shade3D Knowledge Base" online in which they have organized the contents that they have answered the inquiries from users. The number of registered items amounted to about 1,000 in 16 fields. However, they also have heard some complaints from the users. For example, they can't get correct answers unless they input search keywords correctly, and they can't put sticker or make notes on it. Therefore, based on these 1,000 items, they added new items related with Shade3D Ver.2.0 (the latest version). Furthermore, they carefully selected the contents and added user cases to publish this book. He says that this could fill the blank zone between introductory books and technical books.

Finally, the author of "Expression Technology Test Official Guidebook (Data Procession / Database)", Kazuki Ishikawa gave a speech. He is fulltime Auditor of FORUM8 and a part-time lecturer of Faculty of Informatics, Daido University. In the beginning, he described the book as reproduction of his lecture based on the materials he uses in his lecture of "Data processing" for liberal arts education of the University. He said that we live in the Internet society where a huge amount of data circulate every day but cannot digest them adequately, idea of statistics leads to effective utilization of such data. Then he pointed out that Florence Nightingale, who is known as Angel in White, analyzed when she served Crimean War that many of the causes of death of soldiers were insanitariness by a statistical method as a matter of fact and saved a lot of lives. Then he mentioned the origin of the word and its flow to present statistical analytical method ("descriptive statistics" and "inferential statistics"). Saying that this book mainly deals with descriptive statistics (quantification and visualization), he explained its points by listing up specific examples.

(Written by Takashi Ikeno)