Toyota's Autonomous Vehicle Team Makes a Key Acquisition

Toyota’s driverless vehicle team additions signal a final push for the finish.

Look closely at the image at the top of this story and you will see why Jaybridge Robotics was an acquisition target for TRI, Toyota’s vehicle automation company. You will notice there are no drivers on those heavy machines.

Toyota’s automation team headed by Gill Pratt Ph.D. is bringing in Jaybridge to help TRI with the software and automation it will need to roll out automated vehicles to the public. Dr. Pratt’s bi-coastal team in Silicon Valley at Stanford and MIT in Cambridge is tasked with taking Toyota’s existing autonomous vehicle technology and finalizing the design so that it can be adapted to passenger cars.

Dr. Pratt explained the Jaybridge Robotics acquisition, saying "TRI's mission is to bridge the gap between research and product development in many areas, including artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous passenger vehicles. 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."

Toyota did not detail the type of partnership that it has with Jaybridge. However, Jaybridge’s CEO, Jeremy Brown, said, "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."

Image Courtesy of Jaybridge Robotics