Top engineering design universities join Toyota for self–driving car robotics research.

The race to develop a self–driving car is one of the tightest among engineering design firms. Competition to recruit leading automation engineers is stiff, and with good reason.  Apple recently confirmed contracting a senior Tesla engineer and at least six other automation product development experts.

Toyota is thinking along the same lines as Apple– developing a self–driving car will require some of the best minds in robotics and automation engineering design. The major automotive corporation is collaborating with Stanford and MIT to push engineering development research to the max.

Spending over $50 million over the next five years, Toyota will launch joint engineering research centers at both universities. MIT and Stanford are two of the biggest names in engineering design, and large international corporations frequently recruit from both programs.

Though Toyota insists it has no intentions of building a fully automated car, its engineering design and robotics research with MIT and Stanford will certainly take steps towards the prospect. Self–driving features already exist in a number of vehicles. Lexus premiered self–parking cars in 2007 and Tesla will soon release vehicles capable of automatically changing lanes.

Self–driving features, and soon self–driving cars, are the envy and the goal of automation engineering firms throughout the globe. Keep up to date with automation and robotics product development with engineering design firm IP Automation.