Toyota launches automated 'Highway Teammate' technology

The manufacturer begins road tests of its automated highway concept

Toyota has started road tests of its Highway Teammate concept, a vehicle equipped with automated driving functions that it hopes to bring to the market in around five years’ time.

The concept, based on a Lexus GS sedan, aims to demonstrate how the driver-car relationship will evolve in the age of artificial intelligence.

The testing is part of Toyota’s view of the evolving relationship between drivers and their cars, which they are calling the Mobility Teammate Concept. The manufacturer says it will have autonomous driving systems based on automated technologies on the roads by 2020.

First trials of the concept have taken place on Tokyo’s Shuto Expressway, with a series of driving manoeuvers to test automated functions. The car is equipped for automated motorway driving from the slip road to the exit. Its on-board systems monitor traffic conditions, make decisions and take actions such as merging onto or exiting the road, maintaining or changing lanes and keeping a set distance from other traffic.

Highway Teammate relies on highly accurate road mapping data and can pinpoint the car’s position; it also uses multiple external sensors to recognise nearby vehicles and hazards and selects routes and lanes according to the selected destination. The technology automatically operates the steering wheel, accelerator and brakes to achieve the appropriate speed and driving lines, in much the same way as a human drives a car.

Toyota is among several manufacturers, including Nissan and General Motors, now setting a 2020 horizon for the deployment of more advanced self-driving technologies. “It’s an important step for us,” said Toyota chief safety technology officer Moritaka Yoshida. “Automatic driving is a technology that will change the concept of the car.”

Toyota's next step towards increased autonomy is making its Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) safety package available on three models in Japan by the end of 2015. The package, named ITS Connect, features vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication to provide drivers with information that cannot be picked up by on-board sensors, including traffic signal information and the presence of vehicles and pedestrians in blind spots.