Toyota Research Institute (TRI) is furthering its support of open source platforms by donating $100,000 to the Computer Vision Center (CVC) to accelerate its development of an open source simulator for automated driving, Car Learning to Act (CARLA).
CARLA is hosted on Github, and its development is directed by the CVC at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) in Spain. The non-profit, open source simulator is for the development, training and validation of automated urban driving systems. It is designed to ensure the stability of automated vehicles in myriad situations that are not always testable in the real world. With flexibility and realism in mind, CARLA offers a multitude of environmental conditions and is designed to be extended and easily modified to fit specific project needs.
CARLA is another major commitment by TRI to an open source platform. TRI has made significant donations for two consecutive years to the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF), which offers the global robotics community access to open source robotics software and development tools. TRI is also the primary contributor to Drake, an open source C++ toolbox created by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) for analyzing the dynamics of robots and building control systems.