Uber Technologies has announced that it will expand its Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) outside of the U.S. for the first time. The transportation network company, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California, has chosen to expand their research development center in the Canadian city of Toronto.
The ATG differs from most Uber offices in the sense that their sole focus is aimed at the hardware and software of autonomous vehicles. Employees who work within the ATG are dedicated to developing both the algorithms of self-driving cars as well as the mechanics and robotics that execute given commands.
The new ATG research center in Toronto will be located in the backyard of the University of Toronto and will be led by local artificial intelligence researcher, Rachel Urtasun.
Urtasun is a professor at the University of Toronto and the Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning and Computer Vision. Her work on driverless car technology has made her one of the most influential people in the world of autonomous vehicle development. Urtasun will also be joined by AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton who currently heads Canadian operations of Google’s Brian Team‘s.
Eight University of Toronto students and doctoral graduates will also be joining Urtasun’s team in helping Uber evolve their self-driving vehicles. During Urtasun’s time as the head of the ATG in Toronto, she will continue as a professor at the university.
“The University of Toronto has long been considered a global leader in artificial-intelligence research,” Meric Gertler, the president of the University of Toronto, said in a press release. “That’s why we’re so pleased to see professor Raquel Urtasun, one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of machine perception, take on this incredibly exciting role.”
Gertler continued by saying, “We are equally pleased that she will remain a professor at the university, continuing to support the university and the Vector Institute while promoting Toronto as the primary destination in the world for the best researchers in this fast-growing and critical field.”
On top of claiming Urtasun as the head of their new Toronto research center, Uber has pledged to donate $5 million over several years to a non-profit research institution for AI Urtasun initiated called Vector Institute.
When asked why Uber, Urtasun expressed that the major reason she agreed to join the company was because of the team working within the ATG offices.
“Since the first time that I visited ATG, I really loved the team,” Urtasun said. “And they’re fantastic individuals doing great work, and there was a lot of synergy. There’s also the commitment to those kinds of things that we’re doing in Toronto, and that was a factor in the decision.”
Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group will now have a total of three research hubs with locations in Pittsburgh, San Francisco and now, Toronto.
“Toronto has emerged as an important hub of artificial intelligence research, which is critical to the future of transportation,” Uber CEO Travis Kalanick wrote in a blog post welcoming Urtasun and announcing the group, praising the Ontario and federal governments for their investments in the field.