Third Toyota Research Location for Institute will be Ann Arbour

The new home for Toyota’s third research institute will be Ann Arbour . The new facility will be placed near the University of Michigan, as announced by Gill Pratt, CEO of Toyota research institute, during his speech in San Jose at Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference. He also added that Toyota has deep roots in the Ann Arbor community.

Toyota will establish its artificial intelligence and robotics research center by opening a third facility in Ann Arbor, Mich.

The largest automaker said that they will invest $1 billion during the next five years in a research center based in Palo Alto, Calif. The TRI was moved to Ann Arbour because of the University qualities. There will be 15 Toyota employees transferred to Ann Arbour’s new TRI, and the expectations are that it will be opened in June. There will probably be 50 staff members.

Joining the TRI facility established last January in Palo Alto, working with Stanford (TRI-PAL), Cambridge working with MIT (TRI-CAM), is TRI-ANN.

For more than a decade Toyota Technical Centers have been controlling research in the field of autonomous cars.

Professors Ryn Eustice and Edwin Olson U-M, will join TRI-ANN as the field leads for mapping/localization and perception, appropriately. Both of them will be based in the Ann Arbour office. TRI-ANN will focus generally on fully autonomous driving. TRI-PAL will be working on “guardian angel” driving, meaning when the driver is consistently engaged but the vehicle helps as needed.

This Toyota Research Institute is one adventure built and designed to bridge the gap in the middle fundamental research and product growth.

One of the first aims is to improve the safety of the vehicle and to create a car that is incapable of causing a crash.

At the end the TRI will advance scientific detection employing techniques from artificial intelligence and machines. The ambition in this area is to lower costs and better performance for future mobility systems.

Pratt said that Toyota’s goal is safer and more secure mobility for all, anywhere, and huge improvements in the quality of life that this kind of autonomous mobility can bring.