Countless vehicle manufacturers are all racing to develop the newest and greatest self-driving cars. While they may spend large amounts of money and effort on a number of other great life-improving developments, Toyota shouldn’t be counted out of the competition yet. Taking them one step closer to their goal of having a road-ready autonomous car by 2020, they have welcomed all 16 members of Jaybridge Robotics’ engineering team to work on their own in-house self-driving car development program. This is not an acquisition of the entire company however, with Jaybridge continuing to support their existing client base for the foreseeable future.
“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.” stated Jaybridge CEO Jeremy Brown
The staff acquired from Jaybridge include experts with decades of experience in developing, testing, and supporting autonomous vehicle products, who will be joining the existing members of the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) at its research center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near MIT. This research center is already involved in collaborative development with the nearby universities in a number of fields including AI and robotics, to which they have already pledged $1 billion to support.
These new hires will be fully involved in the development that is ongoing there, as well as working closely with other TRI facilities across the US and other Toyota research and development teams worldwide, meaning we could see some exciting results sooner rather than later.
