Toyota Makes Good on Safety R&D Pledge

ANN ARBOR, MI – Toyota pulls back the curtain on its fledgling Collaborative Safety Research Center, commissioned by CEO Akio Toyoda in January with $50 million in backing and a pledge to further automotive safety research to the benefit of “the entire industry.”

Housed at the Toyota Technical Center’s campus here, the CSRC is part of the auto maker’s mea culpa for its role in a 2009-2010 sudden-acceleration scandal that tarnished its sterling quality reputation, triggered a congressional investigation into the safety of its cars and trucks and cost the company $16.4 million in fines from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Admin.

CSRC activities housed at Toyota’s Ann Arbor technical center.

In detailing the many projects now under way through the CSRC, most in partnerships with a half-dozen U.S. universities, executives emphasize Toyota’s shift toward a more open approach that will put much of the work being performed into the public domain for others to use.

“We’ve done collaborative research for decades, but it has always been more proprietary,” notes Chuck Gulash, who heads up the CSRC operation. “So the openness, sharing (of this work) is unique – and to a great extent, unique to the industry.

“This is a fundamental change at Toyota…to being more open and collaborative.”

Initial research being undertaken as part of the $50 million/5-year program is aimed mainly at improving safety for young children, teenagers and the elderly.

It involves everything from gathering statistics on real-world car crashes to bettering education for first-time and aging drivers and creating more detailed computer models of the human body for use in virtual crash simulations.

The CSRC also will explore distracted-driving issues, seeking to determine whether specific vehicle systems are better controlled by knobs and buttons or by voice commands.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, will observe the driving habits of 100 volunteers in two age groups, 20-29 and 60-69, both tech-savvy and novice, to determine which method of accessory control least takes the driver’s mind off the road.

“Voice-activation interfaces need to be well-designed,” says Bryan Reimer, who will head up the MIT research. “Eyes on the road does not equal mind on the road,” he adds, noting a recent report blamed “inattention” for 54 of 69 accidents studied.

Other Toyota partners include Wayne State University, Wake Forest University, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).

Among projects, the auto maker is working with Wayne State in a 5-year program to add virtual models of a 10-year-old child and elderly female to its THUMS (Total Human Model for Safety) database. UMTRI will do full-body laser scans on 180 test subjects, including the elderly and obese, in different seating positions to further expand the THUMS data.

Developed in 2000, the THUMS software is on its fourth iteration and allows vehicle developers to measure collision forces on up to 2 million data points, rather than the handful possible when using a physical test dummy in an actual crash test. Toyota says the tool helped it develop specifications for safer racing-car seats in a recent project commissioned by NASCAR.

Other work includes a program with VTTI to develop better ways to teach teenagers to drive safely; a 3-year study with MIT to see if brain-fitness training can make the elderly better drivers; and a project with CHOP to establish a national database on injury accidents involving children.

A project with Wake Forest will attempt to develop algorithms that could be used by future onboard data-event recorders to determine the likely types and severity of injuries in a crash and beam that information to emergency responders to ensure those involved get proper medical help as quickly as possible.

Toyota says it is focusing on children and teenagers, because they are victims of many of the injuries and fatalities.

“Twelve teenagers die in crashes in the U.S. every day,” says Tina Brunetti Sayer, who heads the teen-driver-coaching project for Toyota.

The elderly are becoming a bigger factor in the U.S., Gulash notes. “Those more than 65 years old will make up more than 20% of the U.S. population in 2040,” he says, adding their changing physiology poses a particular challenge in designing systems meant to prevent injuries in a crash.

Research undertaken here will be coordinated with similar work under way in Japan. Gulash says each project pairs a lead researcher in the U.S. with one in Tokyo so results can be shared and help drive product development for Toyota worldwide.

The auto maker says it will make available results of its research on a new website.

For now, the CSRC projects don’t go beyond the original limits of $50 million and five years, but “we’re hoping this gets so good that it will expand,” says Toyota spokesman John Hanson.

The project could bring in other partners, including other auto makers, Gulash says, “but for now, we just wanted to get going.”

[email protected]