Toyota, Intel, Ericsson, Denso, and NTT DoCoMo on Thursday announced a new big data automotive initiative that will see them form a consortium dedicated to collecting, managing, sharing, and analyzing information with the goal of creating, maintaining, and advancing a connected car system of the future that’s meant to entail a wide variety of Internet of Things (IoT) and related solutions. The Automotive Edge Computing Consortium that the tech giants are now looking to establish in the near future should serve as the backbone of their connected driving ambitions, with its creators hoping that the group will ultimately establish an entirely new ecosystem and set a standard in this emerging industry segment that’s still relatively fragmented.
While the official press release on the matter doesn’t explicitly mention self-driving solutions, all entities partaking in the initiative have been rather vocal about their autonomous driving ambitions in the past and it’s understood that the establishment of the new consortium is yet another step in their efforts to secure a foothold in the driverless vehicle market that’s expected to be worth trillions of dollars in a few decades, according to some estimates. Apart from connected car systems, the group will also be pursuing their supporting technologies like mapping solutions, real-time navigation, and intelligent driving assistance, Toyota and its partners said. As contemporary Internet-enabled vehicles are slowly entering the mainstream, the data they’re sharing with the cloud is rising in an exponential manner and the current state of networking and computing technologies requires a significant overhaul, the founders of the newly announced consortium believe. Their initiative is hence meant to facilitate the process of developing and transitioning to new technological solutions in a variety of ways. Toyota, Intel, and other partners have yet to explain how 5G will fit into their future plans regarding this project, though more details on the matter will likely follow shortly.
Once the Automotive Edge Computing Consortium is officially established later this year, its founders will introduce a range of new projects that will be aimed at both fulfilling its ultimate goals and expanding the group itself. Some of its accomplishments may be revealed as early as January when the next iteration of CES is set to take place.