Toyota invests $50M to Stanford, MIT for advanced research on car AI

Following the footsteps, the Japanese automobile pioneer, Toyota, is investing $50 million in developing technologies that would enhance the artificial intelligence in the cars. Having said that, it shows the company’s interest in the upcoming era of autonomous battery operated vehicles. Toyota is establishing research labs in the MIT and Standford Universities.

To accomplish the aim, Toyota is willing spend near about $50 million over a course of five years and has already partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Standford University. Apparently, the technology developed would help the company produce the cars capable of letting the old and physically challenged people to drive. The AI would determine the environment outside and the location to travel.

Kiyotaka Ise, Toyota’s senior managing officer, said, “That, to us, is like a train without an operator. We always put drivers in the vehicles, in control. That’s quite different from what Google is considering.”

A Robotic Scientist at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Gill Pratt, would be leading this project with an aim to develop such technologies in approximate five years.

For now, there are no confirmation about what the final product would be like, but apparently, we can expect the teams at the MIT and Stanford University to develop technologies that would help elderly and physically handicapped people to drive the car without any worries on the controls. We can expect algorithms or may be new sensors that would help the cars drive with such people in them.

This would not only assist the people above, but also others wanting to drive safely to home, office and to other locations by leaving all of their worries on the super-accurate computers. There have been reports about Google autonomous cars getting into the accidents but only due to the mistakes of other human controlled cars.

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Apart from this, there are other companies as well that are willing to represent their innovation in the field of the autonomous driving. For an instance, Apple is working on a secret electric vehicle project Titan to produce such cars by the end of the year 2020. The company has already poached and hired engineers from automobile and battery related industries.

Other than this, we have German pioneers working on such products. Apparently, the fuel is going to be depleted in about 40 years, and then all we have is the renewable energy – Sun, Wind and Tides, and the batteries to help our vehicles run.

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James Oliver

James is a tech-savvy journalist who specializes in consumer electronics. He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering and has a knack for dissecting gadgets to their core. Whether it's smartphones, wearables, or smart home devices, James has got it covered. In his free time, he enjoys mountain biking.