Toyota Will Spend $50M Researching The Perfect Robot Car

Aaron Cole
by Aaron Cole

Toyota announced Friday it would invest $50 million in research facilities at Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study and develop artificial intelligence for future safety and autonomous driving.

The facilities will teach computers to recognize and monitor objects — a swerving car vs. a parking one was provided as one example — on the road that drivers are too busy for because “Candy Crush.”

The joint programs at MIT and Stanford will first develop enhanced safety systems designed to “share control” with drivers and computers. Eventually, researchers believe, people will just forget that they care and give up driving to the robots.

“AI-assisted driving is a perfect platform for advancing fundamental human-centric artificial intelligence research while also producing practical applications,” Fei-Fei Li, an associate professor of computer science at Stanford, director of SAIL and the director of the new AI center, said according to the manufacturer. “Autonomous driving provides a scenario where AI can deliver smart tools for assistance in decision making and planning to human drivers.”

The Stanford lab was created with the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, which helped create chess-playing computers in the 1960s, pioneered AI in the 1970s and recently competed in the 2007 DARPA urban challenge for autonomous cars.

(H/T to David for sending this over.)


Aaron Cole
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  • SCE to AUX SCE to AUX on Sep 05, 2015

    As long as human drivers remain legally responsible for crashes, they won't buy such vehicles.

  • John John on Sep 05, 2015

    If you use cruise control, you are already "sharing control" with computers - ditto for anti-lock brakes, traction control, launch control, parking assist, etc., etc.. Even the automatic "seek scan" function of your auto's radio features "shared" human/robot "control".

    • Brn Brn on Sep 06, 2015

      I'm still telling the car how fast to go, when to accelerate, when to brake, when to go right and when to go left. If the car does differently, than there's a potential lawsuit to the manufacturer.

  • Shaker Shaker on Sep 06, 2015

    I'm becoming a Luddite; not because I wish to, but the push to total reliance on technology - driven purely by the profit motive. Of course, my tune may change when I can play chess with my car while in traffic on the way to the regeneration facility.

    • See 4 previous
    • Shaker Shaker on Sep 07, 2015

      @WheelMcCoy "Forethought" implies "planning", which is an anathema to the Free Market. Let's just pitch it at the wall, and see what sticks. Oh, and it will be up to the government (taxes) to establish and enforce the (inevitable) regulations regarding this. And wait until the insurance companies (who will jump for joy, initially) find out the cost of all the lawsuits due to unintended consequences of these cars - when a hacking will possibly kill someone. Edit: I'm ENTIRELY in support of technology that will prevent accidents due to health problems (we're not getting any younger!) or other driver incapacity, but these have to have a very thick firewall from "The Internet Of Things". Computers are more powerful than ever, and don't need a constant connection to "The Cloud" to be functional - that's just the desire of corporations to increase our reliance on it, and they are pushing the "added value" of it while ignoring the security issues.

  • Mcs Mcs on Sep 08, 2015

    Then there's this little item. Most AV researchers think they're about to conquer Everest and they aren't even to the base camp yet. http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/researcher-hacks-selfdriving-car-sensors

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