Toyota Motor Corporation and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation have agreed to collaborate on developing, verifying, and standardizing technology in the connected car field, combining the automotive vehicle-related technologies of Toyota with the information and communication technologies(ICT) of NTT Group companies.
1. Aims of the Collaboration
Toyota and the NTT Group, sharing their technologies, knowledge and expertise, and making use of Big Data obtained from automotive vehicles, will carry out joint research and development of technologies necessary for solving various issues facing society, including traffic accidents and congestion, and for providing customers with new mobility services, aimed at realizing a sustainable Smart Mobility Society in the future from a global perspective.
2. Areas of Collaboration
(1) Platform for data collection, accumulation, and analysis
Create technologies for building and administering a platform to realize collection and accumulation of huge amounts of vehicle information and other data received from large numbers of vehicles, for distributing large amounts of data, and for analyzing and processing the collected Big Data in real time.
(2) IoT networks and data centers
Study the network topology of global infrastructure and optimal data center deployment necessary for safe and reliable collection and distribution of large amounts of data, based on assumption of vehicle use cases.
(3) Next-generation communication technologies (5G, edge computing)
Conduct studies to determine the optimal mobile communications system considering vehicle use cases and perform connection tests of such systems to promote 5G standardization for automotive vehicles, and verify the applicability of edge computing technology.
(4) Agents
Develop technologies for providing drivers with user-friendly services by combining driving advice based on understanding of the environment inside and outside the vehicle, voice interaction technology, and other technologies by using AI (artificial intelligence).
3. Roles of Each Company
Toyota: Based on its knowledge of vehicle use cases and data requirements on the vehicle side, will research and develop an ICT platform for connected cars, aimed at mobility service value creation.
NTT Group:
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4. Coming Developments
A field trial is planned for 2018 to assess the feasibility and usability of representative services in the connected car field.
