Toyota Research Institute (TRI) will probably “end up with 100 people in each location”

Etopia News recently reported that Toyota Research Institute (TRI) CEO Gill Pratt would be appearing at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas on January 5, 2016, as part of the Consumer Electronics Show to speak in more detail than previously about TRI’s plans to spend a billion dollars over five years researching machine learning and artificial intelligence for automotive, robotic home care, and who-knows-what-other future applications in the shadow of, and in cooperation with, two of the country’s premier scientific and technological universities, Stanford and MIT.

Now Cindy Knight, a Toyota spokesperson, has responded to an Etopia News follow-up inquiry asking for further details about TRI operations as it starts up with this statement:

“All of these questions will be touched upon in our press conference on Jan 5 in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show, in particular, the first group of researchers to be hired, the ongoing relationship with the two universities [Stanford and MIT], [and] the first set of projects.

“We’ve already announced that there will be two physical locations, very close to Stanford and MIT respectively.  Work begins in early 2016.  I think we plan to end up with 100 people in each location.

“Gill Pratt’s speech and the press release will be posted to our Newsroom Web site at 1:00 PM that same day [at] www.pressroom.toyota.com.

“And as I mentioned, CNET, the official channel of the show, is planning on Livestreaming.”

Toyota is already doing cutting-edge research related to safe automotive navigation, as indicated in "Toyota to Display New Map Generation System at CES 2016" and "Toyota to Boost Investment in Artificial Intelligence by Strengthening Relationship with Preferred Networks Inc."