Toyota has committed $22 million toward a new research institute at the University of Michigan that will explore autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, and robotics, the automaker has announced.
The Toyota Research Institute is setting up a four-year research collaboration with the university in Ann Arbor that will be known as TRI-ANN and join a network of Toyota research centers that also includes offices in Palo Alto near Stanford and Cambridge, near the Massachussets Institute of Technology.
Toyota has also hired University of Michigan robotics professors Ryan Eustice and Edwin Olson to support autonomous vehicle research.
As part of this agreement, University of Michigan will issue a call for proposals from faculty to address challenges in mobility, safety and home robotics.
Toyota already maintains a footprint in Ann Arbor with two Toyota Technical Center campuses that partner with the university on connected vehicles and safety research. Toyota is also a founding partner of the university's Mobility Transformation Center that operates Mcity, a "mini-city" on a 32-acre site on campus that allows researchers to test emerging vehicle technologies.
