Toyota Plans to Create Autonomous Cars, Invest $50 Million in Research

Google showed an immense level of interest in creating self-driving cars and has been testing them for many years now. In recent times, a lot of car manufacturers have started showing interest in creating autonomous vehicles.

Creating artificial intelligence for a car to survive on the road is not easy because the way people see rules and regulations differs from a computer. While Google is trying to perfect it and Toyota has confirmed that it is interested in creating an AI for its vehicles. The company, during a press conference held in Palo Alto, announced that they are going to invest a massive sum of $50 million dollars so as to create the technology that could power cars.

Toyota Autonomous Cars

Toyota will be teaming up with MIT, Stanford experts in order to make this dream come true. While the team will have multiple objectives to focus on during the research, their primary focus will be on eradicating traffic casualties when these autonomous cars hit the road. The group will also include Dr. Gill Pratt, who is the head of the Robotics Challenge in the DARPA organization.

Speaking about Toyota’s move to invest in this research, Pratt said, “Our team will be focusing on making vehicles intelligent so that they could easily identify the people and the objects around them, when in motion. There are so many diverse environments that they may have to transverse and making them aware of the situation is mandatory to ensure the safety of the passengers, pedestrians and any other vehicle on the road”.

Self-driving cars are all the rage at the moment. It’s not just Google, but every big player including Apple, Uber and BMW is trying to come up with their own version of autonomous cars. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook paid a visit to BMW headquarters to know more about their car tech and integrate their own features into it.

The only practical issue that companies face is that neither one of them is ready to give up on their identity. But, it’s impossible to change the future, unless tech companies and car manufacturers choose to come together to create cars that could run on their own. Once they manage to create the perfectly safe vehicle, it’s going to be an uphill task to convince the customers to buy them because people are scared to trust their vehicles with a robot driver.

1967 Toyota 2000GT

Industry analysts predict that in the next five to ten years, self-driving cars will be widely adopted by consumers around the globe.

Leave a Reply