Facebook Inc. created a research lab to develop hardware products and hired a top Google executive to lead the effort, underlining the social-networking company’s broadening technology ambitions.

The new group, called Building 8, will be led by Regina Dugan, a former Pentagon research chief who joined ​ Alphabet Inc.’s Google in 2012. It will create hardware products that “advance our mission of connecting the world,” Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post Wednesday. Facebook will invest “hundreds of people and hundreds of millions of dollars into this effort over the next few years,” he said.

Building 8 will help launch a 10-year strategic plan outlined by Mr. Zuckerberg at its annual F8 developer conference this week, including advances in artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, and extending Internet access to billions of people around the world, Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s chief technology officer, said in an interview..

In a statement, Dr. Dugan said: “Building 8 is an opportunity to do what I love most. tech infused with a sense of our humanity. Audacious science delivered at scale in products that feel almost magic. A little badass. And beautiful.”

Dr. Dugan received her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology and was the first woman to lead the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon research lab known as Darpa, which she helmed from 2009 to 2012. Later, she joined Motorola , then a division of Google, and helped launch Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects, a research lab for ambitious new products.