US-based autonomous driving company Nuro has begun operating its vehicles on public roads in Tokyo with backup safety drivers onboard, marking an important step in the company’s international expansion and highlighting Japan as a promising market for advanced mobility technologies.

The tests demonstrate Nuro’s universal autonomy platform, an AI-driven system designed to operate in new environments without location-specific training. The company calls this capability “zero-shot autonomy,” meaning the system can adapt to unfamiliar driving conditions without prior exposure to local data.

For autonomous vehicle developers, Japan offers a complex real-world testing environment. Tokyo’s dense urban streets include narrow lanes, heavy traffic, and unique driving behavior. Traffic signals, road markings, and regulations also differ from those in the United States.

Despite these differences, Nuro reports that its end-to-end AI model successfully navigated Tokyo’s roads by applying general principles of safe driving rather than relying on city-specific data.