Toyota Sees Robots as a Core Business in the Future

Toyota Motor Corp. continues to roll out new prototypes for robots that it hopes will become part of everyday life as well as a core of its business in the future. From household helpers to single-passenger transports, the automaker embraces the potential use of robots in hospitals, homes, and businesses as well as on the road.

Both Japanese culture and government create a welcoming environment for robot technology. In Japanese culture, robots are seen as friendly and useful helpers to be included in the family and the workplace. In terms of helping to develop the blossoming robot-technology economy, the government has funded numerous robot-related projects, including US$42 million toward a humanoid-robot project and a further US$10 million for development of key robot projects between 2006 and 2010.

Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe sees robotics as a natural outgrowth of the use of robots for manufacturing processes. In a July 2007 interview in the Harvard Business Review, he described his dream car as one that will clean the air, promote health, evoke excitement, prevent accidents, and drive around the world on a single tank of gas. Part of the future he foresees for robots in those dream cars includes the artificial intelligence that would give automobiles the ability to sense and avoid crashes, among other safety and health innovations. To that end, in November 2007, Toyota formed an alliance with Toyota Central R&D Labs, Inc., Genesis Research Institute Inc., and the RIKEN Brain Science Institute to establish the RIKEN BSI-Toyota Collaboration Center (BTCC). The center will be located at the RIKEN Wako Institute in Saitama Prefecture and Bio-Mimetic Control Research Center in Nagoya, close to Toyota headquarters in the city of Toyota in Aichi Prefecture. The group will promote collaborative research into the fusion of industrial technology and neuroscience.

It is a pillar of Japanese society to encourage the cooperation of the individual to further the needs of society, and Toyota sees itself as playing a part in that effort through advanced automotive technology and its relationship with drivers. As part of its core mission to benefit society, the BTCC will work to understand and apply its findings in brain research to advanced automotive technology with three primary goals: to investigate the causes of car accidents, to clarify the interplay between the brain and health, and to improve the ways in which humans and machines relate. The center will investigate “neuro driving,” brain function during the performance of driving tasks, to test drivers’ perceptions and reactions to traffic. Investigation of “neuro robotics” will examine the ways the brain processes information. Focusing on “brain and health,” the researchers will delve into the physiology of the brain and the nervous system, with emphasis on the connection between brain function and health.

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