Toyota to have intelligent talking cars by 2020
The giant car maker, Toyota will begin testing autonomous cars in 2020 but they are also preparing to build an autonomous vehicle which is able to converse with their drivers in order to enhance the driving experience.
Toyota’s cars will be able to track a user's preferences, emotions, habits, and even more.
Instead of simply being autonomous, they will also have artificial intelligence (AI) capable of having a back-and-forth conversation with the driver.
Toyota showed off its Concept-i at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The car AI is nicknamed “Yui,” This new automotive artificial intelligence will provide a number of benefits, as well as monitor the driver’s driving patterns, attentiveness, schedule, and more. Toyota said in a press release at the time:
“The interface begins with the visual representation of Yui, designed to communicate across cultures to a global audience,”
“With Yui’s home centered on the dashboard, Concept-i’s interior emanates around the driver and passenger side and throughout the vehicle in sweeping lines, with interior shapes designed to enhance Yui’s ability to use light, sound and even touch to communicate critical information.”
As reported by Reuters, Toyota is committed to the development of an interactive A.I. car system and they have committed an investment of $1 billion to make this possible between now and 2020. Makoto Okabe, general manager of Toyota’s EV business planning division, said:
“By using AI technology, we want to expand and enhance the driving experience, making cars an object of affection again,”
Toyota are not the first though to develop an AI system to augment the driving experience. Honda announced last July that it would be partnering with Softbank to look into using AI to improve car safety.
In December, it unveiled its Emotion Engine, a group of AI technologies which makes the car capable of exhibiting emotions that could aid drivers, such as by providing weather or traffic information in a cheerful voice.
Ford have also invested in Argo AI back in February to boost their own AI capabilities in time for the launch of its first autonomous car in 2021. General Motors (GM) has also jumped on the A.I. bandwagon by investing in AI startups, such as Nauto, which has also received funding from BMW. Nauto CEO Stefan Heck in July.
“In pursuit of the profoundly transformational impact autonomous vehicle technology can have on business and society, we’ll now more rapidly be able to gather the billions more miles of real driving experience and data required to get a precise understanding of how the best drivers behave behind the wheel,”
It will be interesting to see what other concepts and A.I. technologies developed by automakers come out on top?
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Justin Kavanagh
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