Turing, a Japanese Company, and its Efforts in Developing Fully Autonomous Driving AI Technology

Japanese AI company Turing is developing AI semiconductors and software with the goal of commercializing fully autonomous vehicles by 2028. Turing is exploring a new AI-based approach to overcome the limitations of existing autonomous driving technologies.

Conventional autonomous driving technologies have been rule-based systems that operate according to pre-defined rules depending on the situation. However, this approach has limitations in responding to unpredictable and complex situations. Turing is exploring the use of AI generative models to overcome this. The idea is that by recognizing the surrounding environment with a camera and inputting it into an AI model, the vehicle can be controlled based on the results.

To this end, Turing is developing the AI semiconductor 'Hummingbird'. Hummingbird minimizes semiconductor capacity and power consumption to enable the deployment of high-performance AI models in vehicles. It is characterized by being optimized for quantization and integer operations rather than precise numerical calculations. Currently, they are developing experimental semiconductors based on FPGAs, aiming for mass production by 2028.

In the field of AI software, they are developing a multi-modal generative AI model called 'Heron'. Heron has the ability to handle various input modes, including images, videos, text, audio, and actions. It has a 'world model' that understands and predicts the world, offering the advantage of being able to respond to unexpected situations.

Meanwhile, Turing is also conducting the 'Tokyo30' autonomous driving project, aiming to achieve 30 minutes or more of driving in the Tokyo area without human intervention, using only cameras and AI by 2025. To achieve this, they are also striving to secure high-quality autonomous driving data and are developing a new data processing technology that combines driving video data and map data.

Amidst the intensifying global competition in AI technology, Turing is leading the innovation of AI technologies for the commercialization of autonomous vehicles. The verification of actual driving performance is expected to be crucial.