Toyota Research Institute Partners with Robotics Foundation

Toyota Motor Corp. is making a $1 million charitable donation to the Open Source Robotics Foundation and is partnering with the non-profit group on advanced research programs.

The carmaker’s Toyota Research Institute will work with the foundation and its newly formed for-profit subsidiary Open Source Robotics Corp. (OSRC) to develop open source and proprietary tools for Toyota’s robotics and automated vehicle research initiatives. As part of the two-year agreement, TRI says it will leverage the expertise of OSRC’s engineering team.

The foundation was founded by members of the global robotics industry to support the development and adoption of open source software for use in robotics research and education. The group oversees the development of Gazebo—a 3D multi-robot simulator—and the nine-year-old Robot Operating System for writing robot software.

Announced last November, TRI aims to accelerate Toyota’s research into artificial intelligence and robotics for next-generation vehicles and facilities. The initial five-year, $1 billion investment includes research centers in Palo Alto, Calif., and Cambridge, Mass., near partners Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively.