TU-TESL

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Without accident, James kuffner will be on the car board in June. Since joining Toyota in 2016, the co sponsor of the original robot Department has been promoted rapidly within Toyota. From the chief technology officer of Toyota tri to the chief executive officer of tri-ad, James kuffner is leading Toyota's accelerated development process, and Toyota has also given James kuffner more space and authority. Knowing the operator of Toyota's auto driving business, you can have a glimpse of how Toyota presses the acceleration button of auto driving R & D. In October 2015, Toyota proposed its own concept of automatic driving - "mobility teammate concept". This means that people and cars are facing the same goal, guarding each other, helping each other, and establishing the same relationship as the same partners, so as to give consideration to driving fun and automatic driving. In terms of the automobile industry, it means that the automobile can assist or drive automatically according to the driver's status and road conditions. According to Toyota, three technologies are needed to realize this concept: (1) intelligent driving with accurate cognition and prediction judgment; (2) its connect with communication between vehicles, between vehicles and roads and other infrastructure to assist safe driving It is the representative of "intelligent connection"; (3) identify the driver's status, and carry out the "human vehicle intelligent interaction" between the driver and the driver. After the formation of the concept, Fengtian really put into the research and development of automatic driving, first with the cutting-edge research of artificial intelligence as the starting point. In January 2016, Toyota established Tri (Toyota Research Institute) in Silicon Valley. Tri is mainly responsible for the research and development of artificial intelligence, automatic driving, robots and other technologies. Toyota is expected to invest about $1 billion in the next five years (2016-2020), and it is expected to finally establish a team of 200 people. Dr. gill Pratt, who was in charge of the DARPA robotics challenge, served as chief executive officer of tri. Gill Pratt graduated from MIT, has worked in universities, venture capital, DARPA and other institutions, especially the DARPA disaster rescue robot competition led by DARPA as a project manager, which has attracted wide attention. It can be seen that Pratt has more management theory or management experience in the field of robotics. Toyota also needs an expert in technology development. Tri-ad came soon after TRI was founded, Toyota announced a new appointment at the US ces in January 2016. James kuffner, former co-founder of Google robotics, joined tri. Kuffner is a technology research and development God in the field of robotics. His paper has been cited 15000 times, published 125 technical papers, and has more than 50 patents related to robotics and computer vision technology. Kuffner was Google's research scientist and engineering director from 2006 to 2016. By 2014, he was appointed head of Google's robotics department. Kuffner is also a co inventor of the rapid exploration of random tree (RRT) algorithm, which has become a key standard reference for robot motion planning. After arriving at tri, kuffner served as the chief technical officer of tri, working alongside gill Pratt. Recruiting kuffner may seem like another R & D executive for Toyota, but the focus in the field of autonomous driving is brewing. In March 2018, tri-ad (Toyota Research Institute advanced development) was established in Tokyo. Toyota's staffing target for the new company is 1000. At the beginning of its establishment, tri-ad quickly gathered an initial team of 300 people, mainly composed of employees from Toyota, Denso and Aisin. Kuffner was the CEO of tri-ad at this time. By the end of 2019, tri-ad has expanded to 600 people, and the development of automatic driving software has become the core task of tri-ad. How to land on the moon? Kuffner used the lunar landing program to describe Toyota's development of autonomous driving. After becoming CEO of tri-ad, kuffner set goals for the new company. According to the plan, the self driving vehicle developed by TRI-AD will have five functions, namely intelligence, perception, reliability, interaction and upgrades. Up to now, the research and development scope of tri-ad covers software development platform, high-precision map, road test, etc. In the third quarter of this year, TRI-AD, TRI and TOYOTA jointly participated in the development of the automatic driving vehicle TRI-P4 plan to open the ride experience in Tokyo. Of course, like the existing L4 level autopilot, TOYOTA's P4 is equipped with an automatic driving safety officer. So far, the division of labor among tri, tri-ad and Toyota is more clear: TIR is responsible for the development of forward-looking technology and the creation of prototype products, and tri-ad is responsible for the transformation of forward-looking research and development into cutting-edge technology to accelerate the development and deployment of automatic vehicle technology. Toyota is responsible for mass production of this cutting-edge technology to the car. This is equivalent to Toyota providing vehicle manufacturing, engineering team support and billion dollar software R & D investment - this mode is also the mainstream practice of the international automobile giants in R & D of automatic driving. Kuffner describes TRI-AD as a "prototype to product bridge", which carries the mission of TOYOTA's autopilot's rapid commercialization to technology landing. On the whole, under the leadership of kuffner, tri-ad laid the foundation for Toyota to promote the research and development of automatic driving, and finally let Toyota's automatic driving keep up with the pace of the industry. In return, Toyota paid special attention to the executive from Google. Toyota's leadership management structure is mainly composed of the board of directors, audit and supervision committee, operation officer, director, senior management officer and management officer. Before 2020, kuffner was not even Toyota's management officer. Even Pratt, who is in charge of robot and autopilot management, only joined the company's leadership as a director in 2018. Currently, kuffner's position is under Pratt, but Toyota has nominated him to the board. This arrangement means that Toyota executives have affirmed kuffner's achievements in the research and development of automatic driving. Toyota, on the other hand, began to raise autonomous driving to a significant level. Toyota is the world's number one auto driving company, and is willing to invest in research and development. According to Toyota's financial statements over the years, the average investment in R & D in recent years has exceeded 1 trillion yen (about 65 billion yuan). In 2019, for example, Toyota's R & D investment reached 1.1 trillion yen (about 71.85 billion yuan), which is seven times of Tesla's R & D investment of 1.46 billion US dollars (about 10.29 billion yuan) in 2018. The same is true of TOYOTA's R & D investment in autonomous driving. According to data released by iplytics, a German market intelligence platform, as of October 2019, Toyota ranked first with 1143 patents for automatic driving. In foreign investment, TOYOTA, together with Softbank and Denso, invested $1 billion in Uber ATG and $400 million in Pony.ai, a Chinese self driving start-up, this year. Internally, in January 2016, Toyota announced $1 billion for tri. In March 2018, Toyota, together with Aisin precision machinery and electric equipment, invested 2.8 billion US dollars to establish tri-ad. The rapid commercialization of autopilot is critical to landing technology. Behind TOYOTA's massive increase in R & D budget, it can be seen as TOYOTA's "capital to time" catch up strategy. When Kuffner becomes a member of TOYOTA's board of directors, TOYOTA may gradually put more resources into automatic driving, and with TOYOTA's stride into the arena, the auto driving drama of the automotive industry will really be staged.