Showing posts with label toyota. Show all posts
Showing posts with label toyota. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Toyota announces all star leadership for 1B Research Institute
Toyota announces all star leadership for 1B Research Institute
What happens when you give the most accomplished robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence researchers a boatload of money and a mandate to create? Toyota is about to find out.
The Toyota Research Institute (TRI) just announced its technology leadership team at CES. And holy cow, talk about an All-Star lineup.
In November Toyota announced an initial five-year, $1 billion investment in TRI, which will be a research and development enterprise designed to bridge the gap between fundamental research in robotics and artificial intelligence and product development.
In other words, the mandate is to develop all the cool AI stuff happening in labs and DARPA-backed research projects and bring it to market. Comparisons have been drawn to famous industrial laboratories like Bell Labs and PARC, which are jointly responsible for an impressive chunk of silicon-age advances.
Some of TRIs specific mandates are to enhance the safety of automobiles, with the ultimate goal of creating a car that is incapable of causing a crash; to increase access to cars to those who otherwise cannot drive, including the handicapped and the elderly; to help translate outdoor mobility technology into products for indoor mobility; and to accelerate scientific discovery by applying techniques from artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Leading TRI is Gill Pratt, formerly head of the DARPA Robotics Challenge, a contest pitting humanoid robots against a Fukushima disaster-inspired obstacle course.
"Our leadership team brings decades of experience in pushing the boundaries of human knowledge in computer science and robotics, but we are only getting started," Pratt told a CES audience at the announcement yesterday. "Simply put, we believe we can significantly improve the quality of life for all people, regardless of age, with mobility products in all aspects of life."
The initial technical team includes:
Eric Krotkov, Former DARPA Program Manager - Chief Operating Officer
Larry Jackel, Former Bell Labs Department Head and DARPA Program Manager - Machine Learning
James Kuffner, CMU Professor and former head of Google Robotics - Cloud Computing
John Leonard, Samuel C. Collins Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering, MIT - Autonomous Driving
Hiroshi Okajima, Project General Manager, R&D Management Division, Toyota Motor Corporation - Executive Liaison Officer
Brian Storey, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Olin College of Engineering - Accelerating Scientific Discovery
Russ Tedrake, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT - Simulation and Control
A couple names stand out. James Kuffners research concerns path planning for obstacle avoidance, balance control, self-collision detection, and integrated sensor feedback systems. Those are obviously sweet spots if youre developing an autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicle, but much of Kuffners work has dealt with humanoids.
Its an example of the rapid convergence of previously disparate corners of robotics research. Its also an example of how important TRI will be to the so-called robot revolution. Its a safe bet that path planning and collision avoidance advances made for vehicles will also be adapted to manufacturing processes, advanced humanoids, and companion robots.
Erik Krotkov has sent rovers to Antarctica to look for meteorites and does research on, among other things, perception and augmented reality to make operating remote robotic devices easier.
Pratts team comprises hardcore roboticists and machine learning researchers, many of whom have been toiling away for years in academia. Its thrilling to imag
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Thursday, October 6, 2016
Toyota launches new AI lab in US calls autonomous cars robots on wheels
Toyota launches new AI lab in US calls autonomous cars robots on wheels
The biggest car company on earth has created a research center devoted to studying artificial intelligence. Heres what you need to know.
Toyota announces partnership with MIT and Stanford University for AI
This January, inside a temporary lab near MIT, and another at Stanford, a team of researchers is assembled to help Toyota develop artificial intelligence. The creation of the Toyota Research Institute, announced in November 2015, is a 5-year, $1 billion investment devoted to AI?focusing on the development of autonomous car technology and personal-assistant robots.
Gill Pratt, director of the Toyota Research Institute, is based at the Cambridge location?a larger-scale, permanent facility is currently under construction. Pratt, a roboticist by training, previously worked as a program manager for DARPA.
Toyota has "aspirations to be a leader in the field," said Pratt. To that end, theyve assembled a team of about two dozen members?while most have experience in computer science and artificial intelligence, others have backgrounds in robotics, cars, or design.
TechRepublic spoke to Pratt about Toyotas plans for the new bi-coastal research lab.
Why MIT?
Since Toyota wants to be a leader in AI, they "wanted to be where the action is," said Pratt. Although the company is based in Japan, it is a global brand, and most of its cars are sold in the US. By putting roots down near MIT, Toyota positioned itself at the center of innovation. "It is, without a doubt, a hotbed of where the kind of work on artificial intelligence, particularly applied to transportation is going on," said Pratt.
Why robots?
Toyota is not the first car company to invest in robots. Many, like Honda, have factory robots. But they are one of the first to invest heavily in home-assistant robots. Its because theyre looking to predict what customers will want over the long-term. "What are the needs that human beings are going to have in the next few years?" asked Pratt. Since Toyota is a Japanese company, and demographics are quickly moving to a large percentage of the population being elderly, creating assistant robots will help the elderly "live a dignified life," said Pratt. "We want to focus on mobility for both people and for goods, indoors as well as outdoors."
Why now? Whats led us to this peak in interest in self-driving cars?
Several factors have come together to make the current environment ripe for developing self-driving cars. According to Pratt, "technology has opened the door to whats possible." Here are five innovations that have contributed:
Mobile phones: The explosive growth of mobile technology, the low-powered computer processors, the computer vision chips and the cameras, and all the things in the phones have become "incredibly inexpensive and ubiquitous."
Wireless internet: The rise of 4G networks and WiFi have made it easier than ever to connect.
Computer centers in cars: Most new cars right today have a back-up cameras, front and back sensors, and other tech that helps drivers detect objects in the environment. Not only do most cars have these, but the cameras themselves have become better as well.
Maps: If youre talking about either the navigation system you have in your car, said Pratt, or Google maps in your phone, maps have become really good.
Deep learning: Computers now have "perception at levels of competence close to what a human being can do," said Pratt. "The car can look out on the world and tell the difference between a bicycle and a person thats walking, and a tree and a parking meter?all of these things, and can classify them either almost as well as we can, or in some cases, even a little bit better."
Toyota is most concerned about keeping safety as a top priority. Pratt believes that this is the greatest challenge in developing the technology. "We need to be making things work at the level of reliability that is required for our cars to travel safely," said Pratt. He thinks that Toyota and other car manufacturers may have a leg up in this department, over tech companies like Apple and Google. Theyre used to designing very strictly for safety.
Although Toyota plans to release their own semi-autonomous car by 2020, considering the challenges to ensuring safety, a fully-autonomous vehicle, Pratt believes, is "actually still years off"?unlike Elon Musk, he doesnt see it happening by 2020.
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