Toyota launching safety research with MIT, University of Michigan

Toyota‘s Collaborative Safety Research Center said it is launching three projects as part of a research initiative dedicated to advancing safety in mobility technologies.

The projects are:

• An investigation on driver support features for vehicle lane centering.
• The creation of an in-vehicle intervention prototype to promote safe driving.
• The use of data to help improve technology to aid driver decision making to encourage safer driving behavior.

Toyota’s research arm will pursue establishing metrics and evaluating the benefits of automated lane centering support, collaborating with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab. Researchers will analyze data from volunteer drivers to understand the primary and secondary advantages of automated lane-keeping assistance. This research could provide valuable insights into how various driver support features help promote safe driving.

The Collaborative Safety Research Center is working with the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute to research risky driving countermeasure development and pilot testing, and Touchstone Evaluations Inc. to research risk profiles and context in driver management.

Findings from the three research projects will be shared publicly, the company said in a statement Thursday.

Toyota also announced that it has joined the Vulnerable Road User Injury Prevention Alliance at the University of Michigan International Center for Automotive Medicine to support research into crashes with shared road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. The alliance seeks to enhance industrywide understanding of common scenarios between motor vehicles and nonvehicle road users that have historically led to crashes and injuries, with an aim to ultimately contribute to the development of effective mitigation or prevention measures.

Along with 13 projects announced in 2022, the three new projects are part of Toyota’s five-year, $30 million commitment to explore safety needs and analyze mobility options that expand diverse accessibility levels.

“Our new research projects exemplify CSRC’s dedication to our mission of improving safety in the automotive industry,” said Danil Prokhorov, director of the Collaborative Safety Research Center. “By collaborating with researchers to study real-world problems related to mobility technologies, we aim to develop enhanced engineering tools and empower drivers to maximize the potential of advanced technologies.”

Toyota created the Collaborative Safety Research Center in 2011 to advance mobility safety for industry and society through open collaborations with universities, hospitals and other institutions.