As a top global sponsor of the Olympics, Toyota is set to showcase its next-generation automated driving features – set to appear in Toyota and Lexus models starting next year – at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, along with other prototypes of technology coming in the next decade, according to Automotive News.
“We want to show a high-spec technology as a showcase,” said executive general manager for autonomous driving Ken Koibuchi. The company intends to put automated city driving on the road by the early 2020s, with priority being placed on safety first, then convenience.
The announcement follows the footsteps of Nissan, which claimed last year that its cars would be capable of automated driving through city intersections by 2020. Honda also stated in June that it targets Level 4 autonomous driving in city streets by 2025.
Toyota’s use of the term “automated” – as recommended by the United States’ National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) – rather than “autonomous” to describe its technology is intended to avoid instilling the driver with a false sense of security, said Koibuchi.
The official terminology of Toyota’s vision of automated driving, Mobility Teammate Concept, hints at a partnership between car and driver, with the latter dictating when they will hand off control.
Koibuchi said that before true autonomous driving can be achieved, there is still plenty of technical hurdles that need to be overcome, such as the introduction of lidar sensors. Falling costs of these scanners will mean that they will be incorporated into production Toyotas in the “near future,” he added.
Another problem is the lack of high-definition mapping – even though the Japanese government has embarked on a widespread effort to map the country’s road network, only a portion of its highways are finished. Koibuchi said that most of Japan’s highways will be mapped in time for the 2020 Olympics, so the goal of delivering highway autonomous driving should be achievable by then.
However, Koibuchi added that providing a same level of mapping on Japan’s sprawling city streets won’t be so easy. “Surface roads are a huge task,” he said.
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Toyota mensasar automated city driving on the road by the early 2020s, with priority being placed on safety first, then convenience.
Aircon looks like 80s corolla LE. Sack the designer
It is a very old lexus model idiot