Toyota Expands Autonomous Vehicle Development Team

Toyota Research Institute (TRI) and Jaybridge Robotics have announced that the Jaybridge Robotics software engineering team has joined TRI.

“TRI’s mission is to bridge the gap between research and product development in many areas, including artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomous passenger vehicles,” TRI CEO Gill Pratt said. “The 16-member Jaybridge team brings decades of experience developing, testing, and supporting autonomous vehicle products which perfectly complements the world-class research team at TRI.”

Jaybridge CEO Jeremy Brown added, “Where Jaybridge has historically limited its focus to industrial applications such as agriculture and mining, TRI is going after the big one: helping to reduce the nearly 1.25 million traffic fatalities each year, worldwide. We couldn’t be more excited.”

The former Jaybridge team has joined TRI’s Cambridge, MA facility. Like everyone else at TRI, they will be working closely with counterparts at TRI facilities across the U.S., as well as with partner Toyota research and development teams around the world.

By way of background, first announced in November 2015, TRI is a research and development enterprise designed to bridge the gap between fundamental research and product development. Funded by an initial five-year, $1 billion investment, it has been launched with mandates to enhance the safety of automobiles, with the ultimate goal of creating a car that is incapable of causing a crash; increase access to cars to those who otherwise cannot drive, including those with special needs and seniors; help translate outdoor mobility technology into products for indoor mobility; and accelerate scientific discovery by applying techniques from artificial intelligence and machine learning.

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