Toyota is committed to creating affordable, stylish, and safe vehicles, so it’s no surprise that it recently launched the Toyota Teammate, an advanced driver technology aimed at keeping you safer while on the road. This new safety addition features two primary functions: Toyota Teammate and Advanced Drive and Advanced Park. Here’s an overview of this new and exciting technology and what it has to offer drivers.
What Is Toyota’s New Toyota Teammate Advanced Driver Assistance Technology (ADAS)?
Toyota Teammate is based on Toyota’s Mobility Teammate Concept and exists to assist and work alongside drivers to promote safety while on the road. When you activate Advanced Drive, you enable automatic acceleration, steering, and braking while on the highway, all while keeping the vehicle under your own supervision. This allows you to operate the car hands-free, and it’s aimed at reducing fatigue that you may feel when driving for long periods of time.
The system also helps you to maintain a specific, set distance between your car and others on the road while changing lanes, merging into lanes, passing other cars, and overtaking other cars. It’s integrated with the car’s state-of-the-art navigation and localization system, HD-Map, to perform these functions. You can set this technology to execute certain actions up to 6 miles ahead of your destination. This can help you get your car in the right traffic lane to reach your destination, keep you from missing an exit, and ensure that you change lanes on time.
Toyota focused on redundancy while designing the system and included a series of fail-safe operations that work to prevent the loss of control for up to four seconds if the system fails or malfunctions at for one reason or another.
When you activate Advanced Park, the vehicle takes charge of steering, acceleration, braking, and gear change to park itself, all while under your supervision. This allows you to park within lines, all hands-free. You can activate this Toyota Teammate feature to help you parallel park, back into a parking spot, or pull straight into a parking spot. It uses the system’s 360-degree-sensing feature, which integrates complete-circumference cameras and ultrasonic sensors. It also uses a Bird’s Eye View display in the front of the car to show you the position of the vehicle as it parks itself.
Per the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), Toyota Teammate is a Level 2 ADAS, which it says requires the person driving to undertake dynamic driving tasks in conjunction with the technology. The Advanced Drive function was developed by both Toyota Motor Corporation and Toyota Motor North America, where engineers used the exact same test software and cars in both areas. U.S. specifications were considered, including HOV lanes and drawbridges, in order to incorporate certain functions into the performance and design of this technology.
The technology debuted in Toyota’s first car, the 2022 Toyota Mirai, earlier this year. At this time, this technology is only available in the higher-grade Limited trim of the Mirari. This car is one of two fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEV) that’s currently on the market. It has an electric motor that’s powered by compressed hydrogen gas. The MSRP for this car starts at $66,000, and you can purchase the Toyota Teammate Package as a $5,170 add-on. Toyota Teammate will also be available on select 2022 Lexus LS 500h models that are AWD, set to arrive at U.S. dealerships this fall.
Core Technical Features
Toyota Teammate has several core technical features:
- Intelligence: The system features onboard deep learning functions that allow it to have a high adaptability level for any type of driving situation. It also has onboarding processing that’s driven by a couple of main electronic control units (ECUs) that use judgment, recognition, and operation features to function.
- Perception: Toyota Teammate features sensors that have a 360-degree view of the vehicle through using driver monitoring cameras, front-facing long-range radar, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), front- and rear-side short-range radar, multiple parking cameras, locator cameras, and a front-facing telescope.
- Interaction: This system has a human-machine interface that allows for two-way communication between you and the car at all times. This allows for easy and efficient interaction between the two to promote the safest, most efficient driving possible.
Additional Features and Technology
Here are overviews of some additional features and technology that the Toyota Teammate system boasts of:
HD Map Integration
Toyota Teammate uses the navigation system in the car along with an HD map to add topological data in addition to geometric data to help make lane change and turning decisions. It helps identify correct lanes and junctions based on the navigation information that you set the system to use. It helps the vehicle make automatic lane changes after you confirm any blind spots that you may experience.
Head-Up Display (HUD)
This system features a large Head-Up Display (HUD) on the windshield of your car. This allows you to stay focused on the road ahead of you by showing you the vehicles behind you and next to you on the road, the actual shape of the road, and the car’s trajectory as well as its plans for lane changing and turns. Toyota Teammate is the only hands-free Level 2 system that provides this added safety feature.
Emergency Driving Stop System (EDSS)
Toyota Teammate uses the car’s driver monitor camera to detect where you’re looking, your posture, and whether your eyes are closed. Using this information, it guides the car to the shoulder of the road if it finds that you’re asleep or otherwise not alert enough to drive.
Now that you know what Toyota Teammate is and how it works to keep you safe while on the road, what do you think? Is it something you’re interested in having in your next vehicle? If have any questions or concerns about what Toyota Teammate is, how it works, and which cars you can get this technology in, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us today. We’d love to speak with you and get you connected with this technology.
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