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Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”) and Waymo reached a preliminary agreement to explore a collaboration focused on accelerating the development and deployment of autonomous driving technologies. Woven by Toyota will also join the potential collaboration as Toyota’s strategic enabler, contributing its strengths in advanced software and mobility innovation. This potential partnership is built on a shared vision of improving road safety and delivering increased mobility for all. Toyota and Waymo aim to combine their respective strengths to develop a new autonomous vehicle platform. In parallel, the companies will explore how to leverage Waymo's autonomous technology and Toyota's vehicle expertise to enhance next-generation personally owned vehicles (POVs). The scope of the collaboration will continue to evolve through ongoing discussions. Toyota has long advanced research and development in support of a zero-traffic-accident vision, guided by a three-pillar approach...

SoftBank Corp. (“SoftBank”) announced it developed a traffic understanding multimodal AI* designed for remote support of autonomous driving, designed to operate on low-latency edge AI servers with the goal of achieving fully unmanned operations. The traffic understanding multimodal AI aims to address key challenges in the social implementation of autonomous driving by enhancing vehicle safety and reducing operational costs through external support. By running the multimodal AI in real time on SoftBank's MEC (Multi-access Edge Computing) and other edge AI servers with low latency and high security, the system enables real-time understanding of autonomous vehicle status, providing reliable remote support for autonomous driving. In October 2024, SoftBank launched a field trial of this remote support solution for autonomous driving using the traffic understanding multimodal AI at the Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus (location: Fujisawa, Kanagawa, “SFC”). This experiment aims to v...