Toyota Research Institute Invests Over $100M in Collaborative Research Program with U.S. Universities

May 19, 2023

Partnerships with MIT, Stanford, Columbia, and others address some of the world’s greatest challenges, including aging society, climate change, and human understanding

The Toyota Research Institute (TRI) recently announced the latest results from its collaborative research program with leading US academic institutions. This initiative has funded $100 million of research, and more than 1250 paper submissions since its inception in 2016. It’s one of the leading research initiatives and largest collaborative research programs by an automotive company across the globe!

“We are deeply satisfied with the results of our partnerships with this outstanding group of institutions and researchers,” said Eric Krotkov, who leads the university research program. “We believe that collaboration is the key to tackling society’s biggest challenges and are confident that this program will continue to achieve new breakthroughs.”

In 2022, the program expanded to include an additional 21 university partnerships and 61 additional projects focused on energy and materials, human-centered AI tech, human interactive driving, advanced machine learning and robotics.

Each project pairs a TRI researcher facilitating the research and development while working alongside a university team in an effort to foster collaboration and partnership between traditional academia and industry. The program aims to increase innovative technologies and incentivize future generations to explore new processes and facilitate innovation and creativity.

Last year, three papers won awards at the Robotics: Science and Systems Conference (RSS), which included program highlights such as the one facilitated by TRI and The Columbia Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Lab led by Computer Science Assistant PRofessor Shuran Song helped develop advanced robotic capabilities. These included robotics arms which use an active airflow to manipulate deformable, non-rigid objects that can fold, bend, and change shape. The program ran several successful tests to have robots fold laundry and manipulate flexible bags. The team won a Best Paper Award at RSS 2022 thanks to their development of the Iterative Residual Policy Algorithm, which created a learning framework for repeatable tasks with complex dynamics.

Working with TRI has been an incredible experience. The partnership has allowed us to leverage industry-level resources, which have been critical in driving our research forward,” said Shuran Song. “I am honored to have the opportunity to work with such a great team, and I am excited to see what we can accomplish together in the future.”

Laboratories led by Professor Thomas Jaramillo of Stanford University and Associate Scientist Michaela Burke Stevns at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) have been working alongside the TRI researcher in order to create data-driven theories of catalyst durability. They’re using a novel experimental technique which enables real-time measurement of even the smallest amounts of dissolving materials. This assists advancement of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen electrolyzers which require catalyst materials that use expensive, rare elements such as platinum and radium. This project will help improve fuel cell catalyst durability.

And research led by Professor Ilya Kolmanovsky’s team at the University of Michigan which developed a governor architecture that could be used to speed up the execution time of a model predictive control (MPC) control system solution. The TRI researchers collaborated with this project to create a solution for Toyota Motors which solves a vehicle controller problem.

“I believe our project is an example of how TRI combines industry and academic knowledge, expertise, and capabilities to develop solutions that ultimately lead to real-world impact,” said Ilya Kolmanovsky. ”This is, without any doubt, one of the best research collaborations that I have ever had.”

The program plans to expand and continue into 2024, building opportunities for additional research and advancement with high-risk, high-reward projects intended to foster key technologies for Toyota Motors going forward.

Want to learn more about the Toyota Research Institute? Check out their page on Medium!