Toyota Displays Self-Driving Car Technology Slated For Launch By 2020

Toyota has announced plans to make some of its cars fully capable of self-driving on highways by 2020, thereby ramping up the competition with other automakers, including Google and Tesla.

The company is using the term “automated driving” to describe its new system, which allows vehicles to get on and off the highway and change lanes without any driver input. This marks a change of intended perception from the automaker’s prior approach, when it preferred to call such technologies “advanced driver support”.

“We were afraid that by using the term ‘automated driving’, people would misunderstand that humans are not involved at all,” said Masahiro Iwasaki, an engineer involved in the development of Toyota’s technology.

Iwasaki explained that rival automakers and Silicon Valley players started to use such terms frequently, and Toyota realized that it needed to market its technology differently. “Our goal remains the same – improving mobility and decreasing accidents,” he said.

Google’s immersive strategy of aggressively promoting and developing its self-driving car technologies has often left Toyota in the background, creating the impression to some that Silicon Valley firms are in the lead when it comes to autonomous driving. However, Toyota officials disagree, explaining that the company has been studying autonomous driving for twenty years, having started before Google even existed.

“We have spent a long time to develop the technology,” said Moritaka Yoshida, Toyota’s chief safety executive. “We have advantages and we want to maintain them as we push forward.”

Iwasaki said that the company believes there are two effective routes when pursuing self-driving technology. The first is the development of fully autonomous cars, which companies such as Google are already testing on public roads. The second category encompasses more reliable, semi-autonomous technologies that can be introduced to mass-market cars in the near future. The technology that Toyota has just unveiled fits into the latter category.

Toyota has named its prototype car “Highway Teammate”, thereby emphasizing the fact that the system is intended to help drivers as opposed to replace them. The car carried reporters onto a highway in Tokyo, going into automatic driving mode when the driver pressed a button on the steering wheel near the highway entrance. Without any further input from the driver, the car successfully drove onto the highway, switched lanes and exited via an off-ramp. Once the car had left the highway, an announcement said that the automated mode was ending and urged the driver to take over control again.

Toyota explained that the Lexus GS-based prototype car uses map data to determine where it should run and when it should change lanes. The vehicle also has 12 sensors for capturing data, made up of one camera behind the front mirror, five radar devices that use radio waves to capture the speed of other vehicles, and six lasers that grasp the position of objects around the car.

It’s an exciting time for Toyota and all automakers and technology companies that are involved in the development of self-driving cars. Toyota’s plans are also part of a larger Japanese government initiative to pioneer automated driving in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Do you think they’ll make it?