Toyota Self-Driving Cars Coming?

The future of autonomous cars begins.

The Toyota Motor Corporation announced on Friday a huge investment of $50 million on its robotics and artificial intelligence research effort, in collaboration with Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which will develop "intelligent" as opposed to self-driving cars, the New York Times reports.

The partnership, according to CNet, will establish joint research facilities at both Stanford and MIT to "bring artificial intelligence technology to the road and into the home." The project will be coordinated by former program director for DARPA's (Defense Research Project Agency) Defense Sciences Office professor Gill Pratt.

With the investment into the Stanford and MIT artificial intelligence laboratories, Toyota is strategically tapping into talent and experience recognized and awarded in autonomous motion technologies. Founded by the artificial intelligence pioneers John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky in the 1960s, both laboratories have contributed innovations to the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics. They have also educated several generations of researchers, according to the Times.

"I see why Toyota wants to do this," says Dr. Fei Fei Li, Stanford Laboratory lead and a computer scientist, who is a specialist in machine vision. "It is the biggest carmaker in the world, and it wants to influence the next generation."

Semi-autonomous technologies are starting to hit markets today, from adaptive cruise control that maintains a safe following distance behind a lead car, to lane-departure prevention that steers and directs a vehicle to stay between road stripes, CNet reports.

Instead of going in the same direction as Google and Tesla, companies that are concerned with developing cars without human control, the New York Times says that Toyota will be harnessing advances in A.I. technologies to make humans better drivers.

"In parallel autonomy, there is a guardian angel or driver's education teacher," Dr. Pratt noted. "It usually does nothing, unless you are about to do something dumb," he added.

Moreover, the research is expected to focus on keeping "the human in the loop," in contrast to building systems and machines that replace humans. This strategy also ensures that driving remains fun.

"A worry we have is that the autonomy not take away the fun in driving," Pratt said. "If the autonomy can avoid a wreck, it can also make it more fun to drive," he added.

"We see this as basic computer science, A.I. and robotics that will make a difference in transportation," affirmed MIT Laboratory lead Dr. Daniela Rus, a roboticist who has worked in new areas such as distributed and collaborative robotics.