LAS VEGAS — Toyota made known last November that it would spend $1 billion to found the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) charged with researching both artificial intelligence (AI) as well as robotics. Now, at 2016 International CES, the world's largest carmaker announced it has filled the positions on its bi-costal team.

With two research centers, each a 10-minute bicycle's ride from MIT and Stanford respectively, the TRI will get cracking to "enhance the safety of automobiles, with the ultimate goal of creating a car that cannot be responsible for a collision," according to Toyota.

More than just creating cars safe enough to transport the handicapped and the elderly, Toyota will also take lessons learned in AI and machine learning and apply them to both indoor and outdoor mobility.

“While the most important technology for enhancing human mobility has traditionally been hardware, today software and data are increasingly essential,” said Gill Pratt, Toyota Executive Technical Advisor and CEO of TRI.

“Our leadership team brings decades of experience in pushing the boundaries of human knowledge in computer science and robotics, but we are only getting started."

The investment and the filling out of its research team emphasizes that Toyota is diving headfirst into self-driving cars and intelligent mobility.

This stands in contrast to some carmakers like Ford and Audi that are investing in coming changes in mobility in more consumer-facing ways. While Audi supports self-parking car infrastructure and Ford is reportedly teaming with Google to create autonomous cars, Toyota is showing that it will instead be pioneering the tech that alters the way we get about rather than simply marketing it.