It seems that most of the larger car manufacturers are keen to follow in the footsteps of Google and launch their own self-driving cars. Toyota has just joined that party.

The Consumer Electronics Show is currently taking place in Las Vegas, and there are always some amazing announcements made at the event, like the PaperTab that we featured earlier today, for example.

But self-driving cars are going to become more and more a part of our future, and it’s no surprise that the likes of the bigger manufacturers like Toyota and Volvo have been getting involved.

The Japanese car manufacturer is this week demonstrating its on-board radar and video cameras that monitor the road, the surroundings, and the driver at the show. It’s also a Lexus, which is quite nice.

Toyota said:

The development of systems capable of enhancing the driver’s perception of his or her environment, assisting in the decision-making process and improving overall driving skills.

The manufacturer continued that its key to success would be vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. Essentially that means that the technologies used will allow cars to wirelessly communicate with one another and with things like robots and stop signs. For example, a robot could wirelessly signal that it wasn’t going to turn red, and thus bring the car to a stop.

There have also been some other very cool announcements already at CES: Panasonic is planning to release 32 TV’s this year. Yes, 32, including 16 plasma and 16 LED models. The HAPIfork is like a pedometer, but for your mouth. Using sensors, it monitors how many times per meal and per minute that you lift the fork to your mouth. It will also time the interval between each mouthful. And Lenovo announced a new 27-inch tablet computer to be released this summer called the “IdeaCentre Horizon Tablet PC,” or Horizon for short – it’s been designed for family use.

Keep up to date on CES, HERE.

[Source: CNN]