This story originally appeared on WIRED Japan and has been translated from Japanese. A project to develop autonomous vehicles for self-driving taxis has begun in earnest in Japan. The plan put forward by Tier IV, a startup specializing in autonomous-driving technology, has been selected for a demonstration project by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. Now, a prototype development project has officially begun. Tier IV became known for developing open-source self-driving software and conducting demonstrations of self-driving taxis in May and June in Odaiba, an entertainment district of Tokyo.

An unprecedented road test of a self-driving taxi using a fifth-generation, or 5G, ultrahigh-speed wireless network started in Tokyo on Thursday. Sompo Japan Insurance Inc., KDDI Corp., Tier IV Inc. and other firms tested the taxi on public roads around the metropolitan government office building in Shinjuku Ward. The companies hope to put such taxis into practical use in 2022 or later. A Toyota Motor Corp. JPN Taxi model equipped with software for autonomous driving developed by Tier IV, a startup based in Nagoya, is being used in the experimental project. The four-day test through Sunday is designed to check the safety, comfort and punctuality of the self-driving taxi in two modes -- one under complete remote monitoring and another under monitoring by a person sitting in the driver's seat.

The Apollo 3.0 Launch Event in Mountain View last night highlighted the strides made by the open-source self-driving car project backed by Chinese Internet giant Baidu. The project's leaders announced a new collection of low-speed driving capabilities, such as delivery vehicle driving and self-parking, alongside a wide array of sensors that independent groups can now connect with Apollo software. Apollo is becoming increasingly prominent as a foundation for automotive and technology companies that want to develop autonomous vehicles, but do not want to develop the entire software stack themselves. Two other companies, NVIDIA and Tier IV, also support software stacks that third-parties can use to develop self-driving cars. NVIDIA's DRIVE software platform is tightly coupled to their DRIVE line of computational units.