Earlier today, Japanese automotive heavyweight Toyota announced that it has joined forces with several other industry leaders in order to initiate the formation of the Automotive Edge Computing Consortium. In Toyota’s words, the objective of the consortium is to develop an ecosystem for connected cars to support emerging services such as intelligent driving, the creation of maps with real-time data and driving assistance based on cloud computing.
As things stand at the moment, the member organizations included in the consortium are the DENSO Corporation, Ericsson, the Intel Corporation, the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), NTT DOCOMO INC., Toyota InfoTechnology Center Co. and the Toyota Motor Corporation.
According to Toyota, it is estimated that the data flow between modern vehicles and the cloud will reach 10 exabytes (10 million terabytes) per month by the year 2025. This anticipated leap in the amount of data being exchanged is expected to trigger the requirement for new types of network architecture and cloud computing infrastructure.
Toyota says the consortium will focus on boosting network capacity to accommodate automotive big data in a “reasonable” fashion between vehicles and the cloud by means of edge computing and more efficient network design. The consortium says it will also encourage the development of best practices for the distributed and layered computing approach recommended by its members.
In the coming months, the aforementioned members will commence activities to invite relevant global technology leaders with a view to expand the consortium.