Patents Assigned to Toyota Research Institute, Inc.
  • Publication number: 20240083497
    Abstract: System, methods, and other embodiments described herein relate to steering a vehicle based during loss of traction. In one arrangement, a method for steering a vehicle during loss of traction is disclosed. The method includes, responsive to detecting a slipping tire of a vehicle losing traction with a road, automatically steering the vehicle separately from an input of a steering wheel of the vehicle to cause the vehicle to follow a path. The method also includes decoupling control of a pair of front tires of the vehicle by the steering wheel. The method further includes rotating, independently of an input to the steering wheel and in parallel with steering the vehicle, the steering wheel to match an actual yaw of the vehicle.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 24, 2023
    Publication date: March 14, 2024
    Applicants: Toyota Research Institute, Inc., Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Hiroshi Yasuda, Manuel Ludwig Kuehner, Yan Ming Jonathan Goh
  • Publication number: 20240083498
    Abstract: System, methods, and other embodiments described herein relate to steering a vehicle based on an intended yaw rate during loss of traction. In one arrangement, a method for steering a vehicle during loss of traction is disclosed. The method includes detecting a slipping tire of a vehicle losing traction with a road. The method also includes decoupling control of a pair of front tires of the vehicle by a steering wheel of the vehicle. The method also includes identifying an intended yaw rate for controlling the vehicle by detecting an angle of the steering wheel while the slipping tire does not have traction. The method further includes steering the vehicle separately from an input of a steering wheel of the vehicle to cause intended yaw rate.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 24, 2023
    Publication date: March 14, 2024
    Applicants: Toyota Research Institute, Inc., Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Hiroshi Yasuda, Manuel Ludwig Kuehner, Yan Ming Jonathan Goh
  • Publication number: 20240087151
    Abstract: A method for controlling a vehicle in an environment includes generating, via a cross-attention model, a cross-attention cost volume based on a current image of the environment and a previous image of the environment in a sequence of images. The method also includes generating combined features by combining cost volume features of the cross-attention cost volume with single-frame features associated with the current image. The single-frame features may be generated via a single-frame encoding model. The method further includes generating a depth estimate of the current image based on the combined features. The method still further includes controlling an action of the vehicle based on the depth estimate.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 6, 2022
    Publication date: March 14, 2024
    Applicants: TOYOTA RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC., TOYOTA JIDOSHA KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventor: Vitor GUIZILINI
  • Patent number: 11918535
    Abstract: Systems and methods for a powered, robotic exoskeleton, or exosuit, for a user's limbs and body are provided. The exosuit may be equipped with airbag devices mounted at various locations on the suit. The exosuit may include on-board computing equipment that can sense, compute control commands in real-time, and actuate limbs and airbags to restore stability (fall prevention) and minimize injuries due to falls, should they happen (fall protection).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 13, 2020
    Date of Patent: March 5, 2024
    Assignee: TOYOTA RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC.
    Inventors: Jonathan Decastro, Soon Ho Kong, Nikos Arechiga Gonzalez, Frank Permenter, Dennis Park
  • Patent number: 11920992
    Abstract: Deformable sensors and methods for magnetically modifying membrane stiffness are provided. A deformable sensor may include a membrane coupled to a housing to form a sensor cavity. The deformable sensor may further include a first magnet located on an inner surface of the membrane in the sensor cavity. The deformable sensor may additionally include a magnetic object located at a base within the sensor cavity. The magnetic object may be configured to modifiably repel the first magnet and modify stiffness of the deformable sensor based upon the modified repulsion.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 20, 2021
    Date of Patent: March 5, 2024
    Assignee: TOYOTA RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC.
    Inventors: Manuel L. Kuehner, Naveen Suresh Kuppuswamy
  • Patent number: 11919160
    Abstract: A method for controlling a robotic device includes observing a first object associated with an object type at one or more first locations in an environment over a period of time prior to a current time. The method also includes generating a probability distribution associated with the one or more first locations based on observing the first object over the period of time. The method further includes observing, at the current time, a second object associated with the object type at a second location in the environment. The method still further includes determining a probability of the second object being at the second location based on observing the second object at the second location. The probability is based on the probability distribution associated with the one or more first locations. The method also includes controlling the robotic device to perform an action based on the probability being less than a threshold.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 8, 2022
    Date of Patent: March 5, 2024
    Assignee: TOYOTA RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC.
    Inventors: Astrid Jackson, Brandon Northcutt
  • Patent number: 11922640
    Abstract: A method for 3D object tracking is described. The method includes inferring first 2D semantic keypoints of a 3D object within a sparsely annotated video stream. The method also includes matching the first 2D semantic keypoints of a current frame with second 2D semantic keypoints in a next frame of the sparsely annotated video stream using embedded descriptors within the current frame and the next frame. The method further includes warping the first 2D semantic keypoints to the second 2D semantic keypoints to form warped 2D semantic keypoints in the next frame. The method also includes labeling a 3D bounding box in the next frame according to the warped 2D semantic keypoints in the next frame.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 8, 2021
    Date of Patent: March 5, 2024
    Assignee: TOYOTA RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC.
    Inventors: Arjun Bhargava, Sudeep Pillai, Kuan-Hui Lee
  • Publication number: 20240067207
    Abstract: Systems and methods for detecting roadway lane boundaries are disclosed herein. One embodiment receives image data of a portion of a roadway; receives historical vehicle trajectory data for the portion of the roadway; generates, from the historical vehicle trajectory data, a heatmap indicating, for a given pixel in the heatmap, an extent to which the given pixel coincides spatially with vehicle trajectories in the historical vehicle trajectory data; and projects the heatmap onto the image data to generate a composite image that is used in training a neural network to detect roadway lane boundaries, the projected heatmap acting as supervisory data. The trained neural network is deployed in a vehicle to generate and save map data including detected roadway lane boundaries for use by other vehicles or to control operation of the vehicle itself based, at least in part, on roadway lane boundaries detected by the trained neural network.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 25, 2022
    Publication date: February 29, 2024
    Applicants: Toyota Research Institute, Inc., Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Kun-Hsin Chen, Shunsho Kaku, Jeffrey M. Walls, Jie Li, Steven A. Parkison
  • Publication number: 20240070351
    Abstract: A method for ground state inference is described. The method includes modeling a material state of a selected material. The method also includes inferring an energy function and a ground state of the selected material according to the modeling of the material state. The method further includes predicting a different material state of the selected material in response to the inferring of the ground state of the material.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 24, 2022
    Publication date: February 29, 2024
    Applicants: TOYOTA RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC., TOYOTA JIDOSHA KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventor: Jens Strabo HUMMELSHØJ
  • Patent number: 11915487
    Abstract: Systems and methods to improve machine learning by explicitly over-fitting environmental data obtained by an imaging system, such as a monocular camera are disclosed. The system includes training self-supervised depth and pose networks in monocular visual data collected from a certain area over multiple passes. Pose and depth networks may be trained by extracting data from multiple images of a single environment or trajectory, allowing the system to overfit the image data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 5, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 27, 2024
    Assignee: TOYOTA RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC.
    Inventors: Rares A. Ambrus, Vitor Guizilini, Sudeep Pillai, Adrien David Gaidon
  • Patent number: 11912357
    Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for influential control over a driver's operation of a vehicle's steering wheel. Upon issuing an autonomous control signal to control motive operation of the vehicle, an autonomous control system of the vehicle may reinforce or influence the application of the autonomous control signal by inducing or cuing to induce the driver's hand(s) to turn the vehicle's steering wheel in a particular direction or by a particular amount/with a particular level of torque.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 16, 2021
    Date of Patent: February 27, 2024
    Assignee: Toyota Research Institute, Inc.
    Inventors: Manuel Ludwig Kuehner, Nicholas Charles Fishwick
  • Publication number: 20240061906
    Abstract: Systems, methods, and other embodiments described herein relate to downsampling training data so as to simplify the training of models as well as increase the prediction accuracy of the models. In one embodiment, a method includes training a model on a dataset to learn a covariance function, determining a covariance between a selected data value and the dataset using the covariance function, selecting a subset from the dataset based on the covariance, and predicting one or more potential experiments based on the subset.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 16, 2022
    Publication date: February 22, 2024
    Applicants: Toyota Research Institute, Inc., Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Jens Strabo Hummelshøj
  • Patent number: 11904854
    Abstract: A method includes receiving data relating to pedestrian activity at one or more locations outside of a crosswalk, analyzing the data, based on the data, identifying at least one location of the one or more locations as a constructive crosswalk, and controlling operation of an autonomous vehicle based on the at least one location of the constructive crosswalk.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 30, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 20, 2024
    Assignee: TOYOTA RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC.
    Inventors: Stephen G. McGill, Guy Rosman, Paul Drews
  • Patent number: 11905962
    Abstract: A vehicle exhaust dissipation system includes a fan unit and one or more processors. A memory is communicably coupled to the one or more processors and stores a fan control module including computer-readable instructions that when executed by the processor(s) cause the processor(s) to, responsive to a determination that an ambient temperature is equal to or below a fan rotor activation temperature, control operation of the fan unit to generate an airflow directed into an exhaust gas exiting the vehicle from a vehicle exhaust opening.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 21, 2022
    Date of Patent: February 20, 2024
    Assignee: Toyota Research Institute, Inc.
    Inventor: Rafael Castillo
  • Publication number: 20240054184
    Abstract: A method for multitask learning based on Hermitian operators is described. The method includes training a multitask machine learning (MTML) model to map an input representation of a material onto a complex wave function state vector. The method also includes inferring, by a trained, MTML model, observable property matrices for each observable property of the material. The method further includes converting the observable property matrices into complex Hermitian operators. The method also includes predicting target properties of the material according to the complex Hermitian operators and the complex wave function state vector.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 9, 2022
    Publication date: February 15, 2024
    Applicants: TOYOTA RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC., TOYOTA JIDOSHA KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventor: Jens Strabo HUMMELSHØJ
  • Patent number: 11900626
    Abstract: A method for learning depth-aware keypoints and associated descriptors from monocular video for ego-motion estimation is described. The method includes training a keypoint network and a depth network to learn depth-aware keypoints and the associated descriptors. The training is based on a target image and a context image from successive images of the monocular video. The method also includes lifting 2D keypoints from the target image to learn 3D keypoints based on a learned depth map from the depth network. The method further includes estimating ego-motion from the target image to the context image based on the learned 3D keypoints.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 9, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 13, 2024
    Assignee: TOYOTA RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC.
    Inventors: Jiexiong Tang, Rares A. Ambrus, Vitor Guizilini, Sudeep Pillai, Hanme Kim, Adrien David Gaidon
  • Publication number: 20240043020
    Abstract: System, methods, and other embodiments described herein relate to coordinating and optimizing prediction by a model using intermediate data and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications that improves bandwidth utilization. In one embodiment, a method includes processing acquired data, by a subject vehicle using a prediction model, to execute a vehicle task associated with navigating a driving scene. The method also includes extracting processed data according to the acquired data from intermediate activations of layers within the prediction model according to a cooperation model. The method also includes quantifying relevancy of the processed data, for a target vehicle, to select a subset using the cooperation model. The method also includes communicating the subset to a selected vehicle having the prediction model for additional prediction according to the relevancy and available resources to transmit the subset.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 8, 2022
    Publication date: February 8, 2024
    Applicants: Toyota Research Institute, Inc., Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Guy Rosman, Stephen G. McGill, JR., Paul Drews
  • Publication number: 20240046655
    Abstract: A method for keypoint matching performed by a semantically aware keypoint matching model includes generating a semanticly segmented image from an image captured by a sensor of an agent, the semanticly segmented image associating a respective semantic label with each pixel of a group of pixels associated with the image. The method also includes generating a set of augmented keypoint descriptors by augmenting, for each keypoint of the set of keypoints associated with the image, a keypoint descriptor with semantic information associated with one or more pixels, of the semantically segmented image, corresponding to the keypoint. The method further includes controlling an action of the agent in accordance with identifying a target image having one or more first augmented keypoint descriptors that match one or more second augmented keypoint descriptors of the set of augmented keypoint descriptors.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 18, 2023
    Publication date: February 8, 2024
    Applicant: TOYOTA RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC.
    Inventors: Jiexiong TANG, Rares Andrei AMBRUS, Vitor GUIZILINI, Adrien David GAIDON
  • Patent number: 11891288
    Abstract: Sensors having a deformable layer and an outer cover layer and robots incorporating the same are disclosed. In one embodiment, a sensor includes an inflatable diaphragm operable to be disposed on a member, wherein the inflatable diaphragm includes a port. The sensor further includes an outer cover layer disposed around the inflatable diaphragm, wherein the outer cover layer is fabricated from a material having a strength of greater than or equal to 35 cN/dtex, and a pressure sensor fluidly coupled to the port and operable to detect a pressure within the inflatable diaphragm.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 31, 2022
    Date of Patent: February 6, 2024
    Assignees: TOYOTA RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC., TOYOTA JIDOSHA KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Alexander Alspach, Andrew M. Beaulieu, Aimee S. Goncalves
  • Patent number: 11891094
    Abstract: Information that identifies a location can be received. In response to a receipt of the information that identifies the location, a file can be retrieved. The file can be for the location. The file can include image data and a set of node data. The set of node data can include information that identifies nodes in a neural network, information that identifies inputs of the nodes, and values of weights to be applied to the inputs. In response to a retrieval of the file, the weights can be applied to the inputs of the nodes and the image data can be received for the neural network. In response to an application of the weights and a receipt of the image data, the neural network can be executed to produce a digital map for the location. The digital map for the location can be transmitted to an automotive navigation system.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 10, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 6, 2024
    Assignee: Toyota Research Institute, Inc.
    Inventors: Vitor Guizilini, Rares A. Ambrus, Sudeep Pillai, Adrien David Gaidon