Toyota is betting big on artificial intelligence technologies of the future.

The Japanese auto maker on Thursday announced plans to form a new company, the Toyota Research Institute, which will focus on the research and development of artificial intelligence robotics.

"Our initial goals are to: 1) improve safety by continuously decreasing the likelihood that a car will be involved in an accident; 2) make driving accessible to everyone, regardless of ability; and 3) apply Toyota technology used for outdoor mobility to indoor environments, particularly for the support of seniors," Gill Pratt, Toyota's Executive Technical Advisor and the CEO of the new enterprise (pictured), said in a statement. "We also plan to apply our work more broadly, for example to improve production efficiency and accelerate scientific discovery in materials."

The new company will be based in Silicon Valley near Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., and a second facility will be located near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. Toyota said it will initially invest $1 billion over the next five years to establish and staff these two locations and conduct operations.

Toyota Research Institute is slated to begin operations in January with a staff of approximately 200.

"As technology continues to progress, so does our ability to improve products," Toyota President Akio Toyoda said in a statement. "At Toyota, we do not pursue innovation simply because we can; we pursue it because we should. It is our responsibility to make life better for our customers, and society as a whole."

Earlier this week, Facebook announced that it had achieved "new milestones" in its long-term artificial intelligence research. That includes a "state-of-the-art system that segments, or distinguishes between, objects in a photo" 30 percent faster and using 10 times less training data than previous industry benchmarks.

Meanwhile, Toyota recently said it wants to have self-driving cars on the road within five years. The company has already tested its autonomous car—dubbed Highway Teammate—on Tokyo's Shuto Expressway and demonstrated it was able to merge onto and exit highways, maintain and change lanes, and maintain inter-vehicle distances, all without human interaction.

Toyota also recently launched a $50 million effort to boost the research and development of intelligent vehicle and mobility technologies that could ultimately make the roads safer in the future.

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