“We believe this research will transform the future of mobility, improving safety and reducing traffic congestion”, said Kiyotaka Ise, a Toyota executive who oversees the company’s research and development group.
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Toyota hired DARPA’s Gill Pratt to lead the initiative, which will seek to produce cutting-edge collaborative research into artificial intelligence and robotic technology.
Toyota just announced it will be investing in a joint research venture between Stanford and MIT.
Toyota has been working on autonomous driving technology for about 20 years, but it was known as “advanced driving support” back in the 1990s, Ise said. The project was announced during a conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in East Palo Alto.
The partnership, according to CNet, will establish joint research facilities at both Stanford and MIT to “bring artificial intelligence technology to the road and into the home”.
Professor Daniela Rus of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and Professor Fei-Fei Li, Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) were also present during the event and expressed their views about the ambitious project.
By financing the Stanford and M.I.T. artificial intelligence laboratories, Toyota is tapping into talent and experience in technologies that have recently made significant progress in perception, dexterity and autonomous motion. But what they envision isn’t completely self-driving. US electric auto maker Tesla Motors Inc already is doing final road-testing of a semi-automated hands-free system on its Model S sedan and plans to make it available to customers later this year.
With a focus on the evolution of autonomous vehicles that in the relative short term will have the vehicles working in partnership with humans, we should expect to see something sooner rather than later from the collaboration.
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This all sounds similar to what Google is up to, but Toyota says it’s not in the business of building a self-driving vehicle. Yet. “If the autonomy can avoid a wreck, it can also make it more fun to drive”, he added. Google has been developing self-driving cars, as are Apple and Uber. “Autonomous driving provides a scenario where AI can deliver smart tools for assistance in decision making and planning to human drivers”.
