Autonomous EV Developer Turing Conducts a Factory Tour and Driving Demo of Vehicles Equipped with Large Language Models (LLMs) at their “Kashiwa Nova Factory”
Turing Inc. (Kashiwa City, Chiba; CEO: Issei Yamamoto; hereinafter “Turing”) conducted a tour of their “Turing Kashiwa Nova Factory” and provided a driving demo featuring autonomous vehicles equipped with Large Language Models (LLMs).
The “Turing Kashiwa Nova Factory,” opened in June, serves as Turing’s inaugural vehicle production facility. This site functions as a research and development center and as a manufacturing base for Turing’s proprietary autonomous EVs.
During the tour, attendees witnessed factory operations, vehicle manufacturing processes, and a driving demo in which the vehicle was controlled through LLMs.
About the LLM-Equipped Autonomous Vehicle Driving Demo
An LLM is an AI model capable of generating human-like text and answering questions by learning from extensive text data. Well-known examples include ChatGPT and the image generation AI Stable Diffusion.
The LLM-equipped demo vehicle accepted natural language commands, allowing the vehicle to navigate and respond to different situations. For instance, the vehicle could recognize hand gestures from people or follow voice prompts like “Move towards the yellow cone, but ignore the traffic marshal’s signals.”
Turing’s Philosophy and Development Strategy for Autonomous Driving
There are two main approaches to autonomous driving—LiDAR (laser sensor) and camera systems. Turing employs the camera approach. Achieving autonomous driving through camera data requires collecting an estimated 1.25 million kilometers of driving data to train the model. Turing has developed data collection vehicles that gather learning data through actual road travel, combining camera images with accelerometers, GPS, and steering data for multimodal learning.
Turing believes that creating fully autonomous vehicles requires more than just sensors. Like humans who interpret different signs and gestures, autonomous vehicles require a large-scale neural network to understand the world, which requires them to learn from LLMs.
Turing’s goal is to handle all the steps for producing fully autonomous vehicles in-house, including software development, manufacturing, sales, and charging network construction. The company is currently focused on developing the highest-performing software on the domestic market.
Patent Applications Related to Autonomous Driving
Turing has adopted a metaphorical approach with two modules, analogous to the human cerebellum and cerebrum, to solve complex scenarios through large-scale neural networks. Patents are currently pending for “a system combining lightweight and large-scale models for quick vehicle control and complex situation assessment” and “a language model-based input-output system for autonomous driving.”
Related Release:
Turing Files Two Patents Simultaneously Related to Autonomous Driving
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About Turing
Turing is startup with the stated mission, “We Overtake Tesla.” Their goal is to mass-produce fully autonomous EVs. It was co-founded in 2021 by Issei Yamamoto, developer of the AI shogi program “Ponanza” and a specially-appointed associate professor at Nagoya University, and Shunsuke Aoki, who earned his Ph.D. researching autonomous driving at Carnegie Mellon University. Turing is using deep learning AI technology to create a comprehensive autonomous driving society.
Company Overview
Company Name: Turing Inc.
CEO: Issei Yamamoto
Established: August 2021
Capital: 30 million yen (as of September 2022)
Headquarters: 4th Floor, East Tower, Gate City Osaki, 1-11-2 Osaki, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo
Business: Development and manufacturing of fully autonomous EVs
URL: https://tur.ing
Recruitment Information
We are seeking team members to join us in creating fully autonomous driving software and EVs.
Recruitment page: https://tur.ing/jobs
Media Contact
Turing Inc. Public Relations : pr@turing-motors.com