Dynamic Map Platform, Daiwa House Industry and Hacobu selected for MLIT project to test autonomous trucks at logistics facilities

Daiwa House Industry, Dynamic Map Platform and Hacobu have been selected for the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism’s FY2026 Autonomous Truck Implementation Support Project. The project, for which Daiwa House Industry applied as the lead company, is titled “Demonstration Project on the Reception and Operation of Autonomous Vehicles at Logistics Facilities and Mobility Hubs.” The demonstration will begin around December 2026 at the logistics facilities DPL Hiratsuka and DPL Shin-Yokohama III, developed by Daiwa House Industry. It will test on-site driving by trucks equivalent to Level 4 autonomous driving and mobility hub operations.

Selection for the MLIT implementation support project positions the demonstration as a test of requirements for logistics facilities receiving autonomous trucks. According to the announcement, the project will test on-site vehicle guidance, safety support using infrastructure cameras and guidance to designated truck bays using reservation information. This makes standardization of facility operations, as well as the vehicles themselves, a key issue.

What is new about this selection is that the demonstration targets logistics facilities as the receiving side, rather than autonomous driving in long-haul transport. While previous efforts centered on expressways, this project will test on-site routes, bay reservations, infrastructure cameras and mobility hub management together at DPL Hiratsuka and DPL Shin-Yokohama III. In other words, the main subject is facility-side operational design, not the autonomous driving performance of the vehicles alone. An earlier article in this newspaper, Dynamic Map Platform speaks at JUC 2026, showed the company’s aim to extend high-precision 3D data for autonomous driving and ADAS to external development environments and industrial applications. In this demonstration, the map data will be used for on-site guidance and safety support, bringing its use a step closer to implementation in logistics facility operations, beyond the “data provision” described in the presentation. At the same time, the demonstration will test for the first time how well the company’s platform can support real-time decisions within facilities. In structural terms, the inputs are infrastructure camera feeds and reservation information from the logistics facilities; the processing is handled by Dynamic Map Platform’s infrastructure and Hacobu’s management system; and the outputs are on-site guidance for autonomous trucks and mobility hub operations. If this linkage works, the focus will extend beyond autonomous driving to facility-side digitalization, including waiting times, bay operations and vehicle handoffs. Conversely, the issues to be tested will shift from vehicle performance to what equipment is needed, how much delay in information sharing can be tolerated, and how reservation management can be integrated with safety support. Questions that remain unresolved include the number of vehicles in actual operation during the demonstration, operating frequency, specific operating rules and the scope of data collected within the facilities. Public materials confirm that trucks equivalent to Level 4 autonomous driving will be used but do not indicate the scale of the demonstration. Going forward, points to watch include which routes within the DPL facilities will be used, how the success of automated guidance to truck bays will be assessed, and whether the mobility hub operating model will be standardized for nationwide rollout.

Dynamic Map Platform will provide high-precision 3D map data and an infrastructure-cooperative mobility platform, supporting information sharing between logistics facility management systems and autonomous trucks. The project will assess the benefits of detecting nearby vehicles with infrastructure cameras installed within the facilities and transmitting that information to trucks through the platform, including improving safety in blind spots and supporting decisions to resume driving. It will also test the feasibility of automatically guiding trucks to designated bays based on truck bay reservation information. Hacobu will develop the mobility hub management system and establish its operating platform through its truck reservation service MOVO Berth and its Hacobu Solution Studio system integration and AI implementation support service. Daiwa House Industry will provide the multi-tenant logistics facilities DPL Hiratsuka and DPL Shin-Yokohama III as demonstration sites and test an operating model for logistics infrastructure and mobility hubs to receive autonomous trucks.

Daiwa House Industry’s decision to provide its DPL logistics facilities as demonstration sites gives concrete form to the connection between logistics facility operations and autonomous driving in Japan. On-site design related to truck waiting times and bay operations is important in Japan. If the demonstration establishes requirements for facilities, it could serve as a reference for domestic companies working to connect logistics facility development with dispatch and reservation systems.