Toyota announces AI research to develop "intelligent" cars

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Toyota Motor Corporation announced on Friday, September 4, an ambitious $50 million robotics and artificial intelligence research effort, in collaboration with Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to develop “intelligent” rather than self-driving cars, the New York Times reports.

The distinction is a significant one, according to Gill Pratt, a prominent American roboticist, who has left his position at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Pentagon to direct the new effort.

Rather than compete with companies like Google and Tesla, which are developing cars that drive without human intervention, Toyota will focus its effort on using advances in A.I. technologies to make humans better drivers.

Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker, envisions cars of the future that will act as “guardian angels,” watching the driving behavior of humans and intervening to correct mistakes or avoid collisions when needed.

The Toyota program will focus on developing more artificial-intelligence-based monitoring systems. For example, in the future, an A.I. system might do more than warn drivers that they are leaving their lane and actively correct all kinds of driver errors. Another possibility might be to use A.I. technologies to permit aging drivers to continue to drive by offering driver assistance in areas like vision and reaction time.