Toyota and several US institutions launch new project to develop safe and efficient ADAS systems

According to foreign media reports, Toyota's Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC) recently announced a collaboration with the University of Michigan, the University of Miami, the University of Nebraska, the Texas Transportation Institute, and State Farm Insurance to focus on advancing the design of advanced technology systems to make them intuitive, easy to understand, and interact safely with drivers. The four new projects of this collaboration will promote the transition of the existing transportation system to the safe transportation system of the future.

(Image source: Toyota Collaborative Safety Research Center)

Toyota CSRC will invest $1 million to develop safe and efficient systems, and is committed to creating safer and more efficient travel systems by exploring driver behavior in different environments, monitoring driver health, and identifying driver errors when interacting with ADAS.

“These studies will help us better align advanced vehicle technologies with the needs of drivers to design and develop systems that are intuitive and easy to use,” said Jeff Makarewicz, vice president of Toyota Motor North America’s Advanced Mobility Research and Development Group. “By working with partners and openly sharing our insights with the broader automotive, government, NGO and technology communities, we will be able to increase societal acceptance of these new technologies.”

New CSRC research projects include:

Integrating driving skills with advanced driver assistance systems in collaboration with the University of Michigan. This project will determine how driving skills (e.g., driving courteously while ensuring safety) can be used to help define ADAS or autonomous driving design standards for different driving environments (e.g., different weather conditions, different levels of traffic congestion).

In collaboration with the University of Miami, we are investigating postural reaction times to prevent passengers from falling. This project will determine if it is possible to design alerts for autonomous shuttle passengers to adjust their balance to avoid falling when the vehicle stops suddenly.

In collaboration with the University of Nebraska, the project will evaluate the feasibility and practicality of using vehicles as a driver health monitoring platform. This project will provide a high-level innovative technical framework to use on-board sensors to detect driver health and disease to make the mobility system safer and more efficient.

Partnering with the Texas Transportation Institute and State Farm to identify abnormal driving behavior, this project will demonstrate the value of integrating data from multiple domains (e.g., vehicles, drivers, infrastructure, crash records) in identifying driver behavior, including driver errors and poor interactions with ADAS systems.