At the VietAI Summit 2019, Dr. James J. Kuffner gave an insightful presentation about Toyota and artificial intelligence entitled "Toyota and the Future of Mobility." In the history of human culture, people have been building, moving, and communicating. As technology rapidly developed, especially in recent decades, Toyota has been contributing to the transportation sectors, allowing people to move further and faster. As such, robots and manufacturing have come into play, with novel development and creation beyond imagination in the era of information technology. This, in turn, dramatically changed the way people communicate all over the world.
With the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Toyota has been working on a mission called “Mobility for ALL.” Let’s take a look at how they have been working to achieve this goal, and what kind of world-class technology they have been building.
Last year, Toyota set up a new company called "Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development" (TRI-AD) in Tokyo to accelerate the development of cutting-edge technologies in the field of autonomous driving. In this talk, CEO of Toyota Research Institute, Dr. James J. Kuffner revealed a sneak peek of their product which will come out in 2020 in Japan. They aim to create a car that can drive completely autonomous Level 4. He also shared details of what technology they are building under the hood.
Technically speaking, Level 4 will be the highest level of automated driving, which indicates fully automatic driving without drivers. As the starting point, the car will be responsible for driving safely throughout the journey, and will be completely independent of driver intervention.
In order to create the most advanced and safest driverless car technology in the world, TRI-AD produced a prototype car with 360-degree multi-model sensors, which can be upgradeable like smartphones. It was under testing in Michigan, United States. This prototype uses automated cameras and a learning system called RADICAL (Robust Autonomous Driving Incorporating Camera and Learning). RADICAL is designed for collecting all of the data surrounding traffic and then compiling that information together to help people get an accurate understanding of the world. Dr. James J. Kuffner looks forward to helping everyone building a better road situation through this system.
In addition, how does Toyota understand and test whether or not your system will always work in different situations? TRI-AD is building a cloud-based infrastructure, which is an open-source platform called CARLA. It will be released next year after driving virtually billions miles for testing.
To summarize TRI-AD’s mission, Dr. James J. Kuffner highlighted four goals:
- Create an efficient and effective software process that connects scientific research and commercialization through the use of data processing capabilities.
- Strengthen cooperation with Toyota Research Institute to effectively and link research results with product development.
- Strengthen cooperation with Toyota Group in cutting-edge technology research and development.
- Recruit and hire top engineers worldwide, and develop and coordinate talent within the Toyota Group.
As a special guest of Viet AI, Dr. James Kuffner particularly noted, “I first came here with my family on vacation, and I loved it. The food was great, and it was beautiful, but I quickly realized that Vietnam's greatest resource was actually the Vietnamese people.” Truly, after all, all the hi-tech development and evolution are aimed to serve people and the best solution to any problem is always put forward by human intelligence.
Admittedly, the world has been transformed by AI and other new approaches that can liberate the labor force. But more importantly, AI can serve as an extension of our minds. Using them creatively, we, as people, are able to create unique works beyond limitations.
To access all of Dr. James J. Kuffner's slides for this presentation, head over to Kambria’s Resource Library. The Resource Library can be accessed for free by community members who own KAT tokens. Simply register for the Kambria platform by clicking “Login/Register” in the top right-hand side of the screen. Then choose “Library” to access materials from the Summit.
About VietAI Summit 2019
More than 450 people attended VietAI Summit 2019, “AI for The Future,” organized by VietAI and Kambria. With a program featuring many reputable guest speakers from big tech companies such as Google Brain, Toyota Research Institute, Kambria, NVIDIA, VinAI Research, Vinbrain, Deakin University, and Vietnam National University HCMC, we received many fresh insights into the exciting state of AI research and application, not just in Vietnam, but also around the world. To receive an invitation to VietAI Summit 2020, Like the VietAI Facebook page and Like the Kambria Facebook page.
To read more tech articles from VietAI Summit 2019, click here.
