Toyota is investing a hefty $1 billion over a five-year period to open a new artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics research institute in Silicon Valley. Called the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), this facility will be located in Silicon Valley and will start operations in January 2016. A second institute will be situated near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.
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Akio Toyoda, President of Toyota Motor Corporation, said, “As technology continues to progress, so does our ability to improve products”.
Toyota has already shown an R2-D2-like robot created to help the elderly, the sick and people in wheelchairs by picking up and carrying objects.
Pratt, who was also program manager at DARPA, which is an R&D body under the U.S. Department of Defense, said the new company will hire about 200 people over the next several years. He joined Toyota as a technical adviser when it arrange its AI analysis effort at Stanford and MIT.
Dr. Pratt said, “Our initial goals are to: 1) improve safety by continuously decreasing the likelihood that a auto will be involved in an accident; 2) make driving accessible to everyone, regardless of ability; and 3) apply Toyota technology used for outdoor mobility to indoor environments, particularly for the support of seniors”.
Pratt, who grew up on Japanese robotic animation and dreamed of in the future constructing such robots, stated he selected Toyota over different jobs as a result of it was “so targeted on social good”. But that additionally meant the competitors had simply begun and nobody was forward considerably.
Technology firms such as Alphabet, formerly known as Google, and Apple are muscling into the auto industry, hiring vehicle experts to bring self-drive cars to reality, hopefully within five years.
The announcement comes as automakers have been vying to develop autonomous driving technologies that rely heavily on advances in artificial intelligence.
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The investment also underscores Toyota’s ample cash hoard as it expects to post record profit this year, fueled by a weaker yen. The maker of the Prius hybrid and Camry sedan is on monitor to promote about 10 million automobiles all over the world this yr.
