Toyota Steps Up University Relations for Autonomous Driving
08 April 2016 - 6:00AM
Dow Jones News
Toyota Motor Corp. is expanding its artificial intelligence
research to University of Michigan, its third university
collaboration in the U.S. to try to advance its efforts in
autonomous driving.
Last year Toyota announced a $1 billion effort to expand its
research in autonomous driving and has hired professors from
Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It
also brought on the entire staff of Jaybridge Robotics in
Cambridge. The latest partnership includes the hiring of UM
researchers Ed Olson and Ryan Eustice, autonomous vehicle experts
at the Ann Arbor-based school.
With the recruitment of Messrs. Olson and Eustice, Toyota has
taken a new approach to getting the people it needs in this
emerging area of the tech economy. It has offered the researchers a
chance to split their time between the university and the auto
maker throughout the year. This hybrid hiring approach allows the
company to obtain scarce talent without savaging the universities
that are doing basic research.
Last year, Uber Technologies Inc. hired away 40 researchers and
engineers from Carnegie Mellon University to help launch a new
research center in Pittsburgh. The mass raid left the school
scrambling. Since then, however, Carnegie Mellon University has
tried to change the way it offers positions to professors, allowing
them to leave for business and come back.
Gill Pratt, the director of the Toyota Research Institute who
was hired from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency last
year, said in an interview the institute is focused on having a
close relationship with the universities.
"We are trying very much to have a synergistic relationship with
academia," Mr. Pratt said.
Toyota said it is working on fully autonomous and partially
autonomous vehicles. The UM campus will be responsible for fully
autonomous cars, the Stanford campus will be working on partially
autonomous and the MIT campus will work on machine learning.
Mr. Pratt made the announcement Thursday at a tech conference in
San Jose sponsored by chip maker Nvidia Corp.
Write to Mike Ramsey at michael.ramsey@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 07, 2016 15:45 ET (19:45 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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