Toyota To Spend $50 Million On Self-Driving Car Tech

An anonymous reader writes: Toyota is the latest automaker to see which way the wind is blowing; they've committed $50 million over the next five years to build research centers for self-driving car technology. They'll be working with both Stanford and MIT, and their immediate goal is to "eliminate traffic casualties." "Research at MIT will focus on 'advanced architectures' that will let cars perceive, understand, and interpret their surroundings. ... The folks at Stanford will concentrate on computer vision and machine learning. ... It will also work on human behavior analysis, both for pedestrians outside the car and the people 'at the wheel.'" Toyota's efforts will be led by Gill Pratt, who ran DARPA's Robotics Challenge.

Comments

Why?

[jtownatpunk.net]

I thought they already had this covered with unsecured floor mats or something.

THIS I'm OK with.

[kheldan]

Technology is supposed to help people, not replace people. Technology in your car that helps you be a better driver is a good thing. I have been, and will remain of the opinion that attempting to replace human drivers, literally preventing them from actually operating the vehicle, is a bad thing. What Toyota is aiming for, if implemented well, will be a good thing.

Re:THIS I'm OK with.

[ShanghaiBill]

Technology is supposed to help people, not replace people.

When you make a phone call, do you still call the operator, and ask her to switch the wires on the punchboard?

Re:THIS I'm OK with.

[Dutch Gun]

Technology is supposed to help people, not replace people.

Since when? Our lives have vastly improved since technology has been replacing people, typically by doing things that are repetitive, boring, and/or dangerous (all of which describe driving).

Think carefully about how silly your assertion sounds in a broader context. How'd you like to go back to planting and harvesting fields by hand. Yeah, technology replace a bunch of people there. How about digging tunnels with picks and shovels? Oops, yeah, technology replaced all that sort of backbreaking labor. What about entire offices filled with people mindlessly adding columns of numbers? Technology eliminated that sort of work, didn't it?

Computer algorithms will probably be several orders of magnitude better at driving than humans, and all that time currently spent in traffic can now be used for productivity, relaxation, or socialization. Still, you probably don't have to worry for a while. The first generation of self-driving cars will start adding these features gradually, and we'll use them as safety features or a more advanced cruise control for a while. It's going to be quite a while before humans are *completely* out of the loop when driving.

Re:THIS I'm OK with.

[MrL0G1C]

It does help people.

It helps disabled people who can't drive.
It helps blind people.
It helps old people.
It helps young people.
It helps people who haven't passed their driving test.
It helps people who are too tired to drive.
It helps people who are too drunk to drive.
It helps people who shouldn't drive because they are on medication.
It helps people who simply don't want to drive and would rather talk on the phone or do work.
It even helps cyclists and pedestrians because the roads will be safer.

I sincerely look forwards to the day when drivers are legally confined to racetracks and private land.