A five-year US$30m investment at Toyota’s Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC) will fund the research and creation of new technologies and concepts in automotive safety. Three areas of research are being targeted, which will bring together the various interdisciplinary backgrounds of CSRC’s team. As part of the pledge, CSRC will “explore the safety needs of [the]evolving mobility ecosystem” also continue to seek out partnerships to investigate the safety of at-risk and vulnerable populations.
One of the three fields covered will be human-centric development, including new technology training and customer health and wellness. Another will be safety assurance, focusing on areas such as automated driving, which will involve studying traffic environments and human drivers; the creation of safety hazards; building a deeper understanding of interactions between road users; and driver engagement in automation. The other focus area will be assessment, empowering the decisions of end users and industry stakeholders by identifying quantitative mobility safety measures. Example focus areas in this remit include the development of crash protection measures and repeatable test scenarios for new driver assistance and automated features.
Throughout there will be an emphasis on agility, condensing of project timelines and streamlining of processes to achieve more rapid results.
Dr Danil Prokhorov, director of Toyota’s Future Research Department (FRD) and CSRC, said, “Humans are at the center of Toyota’s technology development strategy, so we are designing our new safety research in pursuit of ‘safety for all’. As part of this, our projects will explore the diversity of safety needs and analyze safe mobility options that accommodate different applications, physical characteristics and levels of accessibility for people and society.”
