TOYOTA REVS UP ITS DIGITAL MAPPING SUBSIDIARY WOVEN PLANET

Toyota plans to hire more people and invest heavily in its subsidiary Woven Planet to work on mobility technology so the Japanese automaker stays competitive amid the global shift to using artificial intelligence and robotics in everyday driving.

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“Toyota’s traditional strength in hardware is something we never want to lose. To make safe mobility we need both, great hardware and great software,” Woven Planet Holdings Chief Executive James Kuffner said. “The world is changing. The automotive industry is going through this once-in-a-hundred-year revolution. And so how do we remain relevant?”

Woven Planet, fully owned by Toyota Motor Corp., announced Thursday it had acquired CARMERA Inc., based in Seattle and New York. The value of the deal was not disclosed.

CARMERA specializes in sophisticated road-mapping updates made cheaper and faster by using crowdsourced information obtained in real-time from millions of net-connected Toyota vehicles.

Winning social acceptance for such technology is as much of a challenge as perfecting the software, Kuffner said.

“When a person crashes, we have empathy for that person. We all make mistakes, and we think: