Toyota will build a new test centre for automated vehicles

New facilities with a closed test track for the development of automated vehicle technology. The Toyota Research Institute (TRI) has started construction of its new research facilities next to Lake Ottawa (Michigan, USA), where, from next October — the date on which they are expected to be operational — the Japanese company will develop and test all its new automated vehicle technologies in completely safe environments.

TRI’s new facilities will allow it to safely reproduce extreme driving situations that are too dangerous to experience on open public roads.

“Because it is a track we built ourselves, we can design it around our specific testing needs so we can move forward more quickly, especially with the ‘Guardian’ vehicle automation mode of Toyota,” said Ryan Eustice, TRI’s Senior Vice President of Automated Driving. “These new facilities,” Eustice added, “will give us the flexibility to customise driving scenarios that push the limits of our technology and bring us ever closer to developing a human-driven vehicle that is incapable of causing an accident.”

TRI’s new facilities will be located on a site of about 24 hectares, where a 2.8-kilometre oval circuit will be built, along with practice tracks of various layouts that will simulate congested urban environments, slippery surfaces, and a four-lane motorway section with high-speed merges and exits.

At this new centre, Toyota is partnering with the Michigan Technical Research Park (Automotive Proving Ground in Michigan – MITRP), the leading automotive test centre offering land for vehicle testing, support facilities and labour services. The MITRP has hosted vehicle testing on its premises since 1968, the year it was created by a major automotive supplier. The MITRP technology park covers 136 hectares and was sold to a private developer in 2010. Since then it has operated as a facility available to manufacturers and suppliers of components for commercial, off-road and other types of vehicles for testing and for the development of advanced technologies.

The land that TRI will occupy belongs to the MITRP, which leases it. On that land, Toyota will design, build and maintain the facilities it plans to construct. TRI engineers will also have access to other MITRP facilities and services, which are likewise open to the organisation’s other clients.

“Our alliance with TRI fills us with satisfaction,” says Mike Jones, president of the MITRP. “We believe it will be a mutually beneficial relationship.”