Toyota has created an AI to prevent drivers from falling asleep

If you’ve ever been a long drive around this beautiful country of ours, there’s a chance that you have gotten tired on the process and been tempted to dose off. For many of us, the smart thing is to pull over as soon as possible and either swop drivers or get some much-needed rest before hitting the road again. For some though, they might not realise their state of tiredness before potentially nodding off behind the wheel.

It’s a catastrophic state of events that unfortunately leads to often fatal results when it happens. And unfortunately, because humans can’t always be trusted to pick these things up early and make the right decisions, it looks like we need computers and A.I. to come to our rescue, which is exactly what Toyota’s new concept LQ car, which debuted at the Tokyo Auto Show, does (as reported by Business Insider).

The car reportedly includes an onboard artificial intelligence program called Yui which learns the facial expressions and conversations of the driver. It is not only designed to allow for a more personal voice-guided assistant to the driver, but can also read the emotional and physical state of the driver which can force the car to take over the wheel or even change the internal temperature climate, seat position or music to keep the driver awake. The state of the driver includes when they are potentially inebriated or in a state of frustration or rage, though these last two emotions would be a lot more difficult to read for the car.

There are obviously quite a lot of cool innovations that Toyota is building into this advanced car, especially on the safety front, but an AI that can possibly save the lives of its inhabitants is definitely the coolest feature and something which is definitely needed on the roads. The car looks gimmicky in the design itself and probably won’t make it onto roads looking like this, but hopefully, this technology can hopefully become a little more mainstream.

Last Updated: October 21, 2019