I always loved to be chauffeured, and I like the idea of being driven by twins, a driver in the flesh, and a computerized clone. When people are at the wheel, I sometimes am scared. Today, I am not worried at all. The human and the robot driver exude confidence, the robot’s driving style is smooth and poised. On-ramp to off-ramp, the human driver could eat, text his girlfriends, or poke his nose. Mannered Japanese he is, he does neither, and he keeps his hands in his lap in a strange yoga pose. Actually, he already looks a bit like a bot. The bot is similarly mannered: As a car approaches a bit fast from the rear, the bot puts on his blinker, and moves into the slow lane. If the man in the fast lane wants a ticket, the bot won’t be in his way.

Highway Teammate, a modified Lexus GS, features equipment that enables automated driving on highways from the on-ramp all the way through to the off-ramp. It uses on-board technology to evaluate traffic conditions, make decisions and take action during highway driving. This includes merging onto or exiting highways, maintaining or changing lanes, and maintaining inter-vehicle distances.

To engage automated operation, the driver switches to automated driving after passing through a toll gate and entering a highway on-ramp. Highway Teammate is able to pinpoint its position using highly accurate road map data. It also uses multiple external sensors to recognize nearby vehicles and hazards, and selects appropriate routes and lanes depending on the destination. Based on these data inputs, Highway Teammate then automatically operates the steering wheel, accelerator, and brakes to achieve the appropriate speed and driving lines in much the same way as a person would drive.

By successfully combining recognition and decision-making processes with the ability to take action, Highway Teammate embodies the kind of safety technology that is expected to play a key role in future products. Toyota believes that mobility should mean safety, efficiency and freedom, and is ramping up its research into and development of automated driving technologies, with the goal of launching products based on Highway Teammate by around 2020.

Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) is, ITS * 1 the world's first to models to be released in the upcoming driving support systems ITS Connect utilizing road-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-vehicle communication using dedicated frequency (760MHz) Domestic * 2 is mounted, It expands on this year up to three models.

As far as commercialization of autonomous driving goes, also not much will happen for a few years. Back at Ariake, Ken Koibuchi tells me that the tech I tested today won’t be on the market before 2020, because that’s how long it takes a responsible company to test a quantum-leap like that, and that’s how long it will take to produce the still experimental sensor arrays in the required form factor and cost. Since I checked on that sensor last year, it already has slimmed down its size. From afar, the Lexus GS looks like a normal car, no rotating coffee-pot on the roof. Getting a bit closer, one notices the sensor under the rear-view mirror, and bulges over the c-pillar in the back. For a production car, those will have to go.