Toyota Will Spend $50M Researching The Perfect Robot Car
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.)
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As long as human drivers remain legally responsible for crashes, they won't buy such vehicles.
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".
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.
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