Toyota is working research related to autonomous vehicles at its Collaborative Safety Research Center.
America’s roads are becoming safer and safer through ground-breaking new technologies. These innovations often are born out of collaborations between companies, and Toyota is playing a significant role in those efforts.
Toyota plans to invest an additional $35 million in the Collaborative Safety Research Center in Michigan for research into the prospects for and problems with automated driving and connected technology.
Osamu Nagata, president and chief executive officer of Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, said during a reception that kicked off the Advanced Safety Seminar in Ypsilanti the company plans to provide the center, also known as the CSRC, with an additional $35 million in funding during the next five years.
The additional money will increase Toyota’s funding for the CSRC to $85 million over a 10-year period.
Toyota’s CSRC opened in 2011 and works with universities, hospitals, research institutions across North America with the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute in the lead as well as federal agencies on projects aimed at developing and bringing to market new and advanced safety technologies that can reduce the number of traffic fatalities and injuries.
The investment is paying off, Nagata said, by speeding up the introduction of new technology that can help protect motorist and pedestrians, Nagata said.
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The goals was to aim to help spur the development, testing and implementation of safety innovations across the industry for all automakers, not just Toyota and we’ve marshaled substantial engineering and scientific resources from within and outside the company to do it.
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Toyota initially committed approximately $50 million over five years to fund the center and its research, with the vast majority of funding going to its research partners. As part of the effort, Toyota’s engineers define critical areas of study and proactively seek partners to collaborate with to develop new technologies.
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The research is made available to federal agencies, the industry, and academia. Initial areas of research focus include reducing the risk of driver distraction and protecting vulnerable traffic populations, including children, teens, seniors and pedestrians.
So far, the CSRC has partnered with 16 universities, agencies and research institutions on 26 projects to help advance auto safety research across the industry.