(Bloomberg) -- The quest to build crash-proof cars at ToyotaMotor Corp. isn’t just a job for GillPratt. It’s somewhat personal. Pratt still vividly remembersencountering the aftermath of a collision between a boy on abicycle and a car that traversed a four-lane road as he walkedhome from elementary school in Springfield, New Jersey.

“The part that I remember the most were his shoes,” Pratt, 54,said in an interview in November, after Toyota announced he’d leadits $1 billion research institute. “His shoes on the road, thosewere what was left of him.”

Handpicked by President Akio Toyoda to serve as CEO of theToyota Research Institute Inc., Pratt is building a dream team inthe field of robotics and artificial intelligence to designvehicles capable of overcoming driver errors and curtailing the1.25 million road-traffic deaths that occur every year, accordingto the World Health Organization.

Pratt joined Toyota from the U.S. military’s Defense AdvancedResearch Projects Agency, known as Darpa, where he was the toproboticist. He’s hired two former colleagues and managers from theagency, a former Google Inc. robotics director and professors fromtwo universities on his resume — Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology and Olin College of Engineering — to the Toyotainstitute’s technical team.

Autonomous battle

The world’s biggest automaker has reason to bet big on Pratt andhis institute. It’s locked in a battle both with auto-industrypeers and newer rivals such as Google and Uber Technologies Inc. todevelop autonomous driving technology. Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc.also are among companies competing for the brightest minds in thefield of artificial intelligence.

Views among Toyota’s top brass have evolved when it comes toautomated driving. In the past, executives insisted on wanting tokeep a driver fully engaged. The automaker is now in the same campas companies like Google in developing its technology all the wayto building cars capable of going fully driverless.

In November, Pratt downplayed the challenges Toyota may facewith recruiting. While he’s seeking to bring Toyota along onsoftware, no company assembles as much finished hardware in theautomotive industry.

‘Real products’

“If you’re producing real products — physical things thatcan intervene in the world and make life better and improve thequality of life for people — it means a whole lot,” he said.“Making an app for a phone, which may help just a tiny bit, mightinvolve the same effort, but the reward is not as much. We’llactually be in very good shape when we try to attract and retainreally good talent in Silicon Valley.”

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Toyota’s technical team includes former Darpa managers EricKrotkov and Larry Jackel, former Google engineer James Kuffner,MIT’s John Leonard and Russ Tedrake, and Olin College’s BrianStorey.

The institute’s work could lead to benefits for Toyota’sbusiness of selling cars. Autonomous driving holds the potential toexpand the market of potential motorists, both among youngerconsumers and the growing global ranks of seniors in agingsocieties, who face the prospect of having to give up theirlicenses.

Google’s goal

Pratt’s friend Chris Urmson, director of Google’s self- drivingcar program, has said he’d like Google’s vehicle to be ready intime for when his son is old enough to get his driver’s licenseabout four years from now. Pratt has a fatherly goal of his own:one of his four sons is 18 and has avoided getting his license dueto fear of getting in a collision.

Toyota envisions autonomous vehicles working much like thedriver’s-education cars Pratt grew up with, which had an extrasteering wheel and brake pedal for the teacher in the passenger’sseat side. Equipping cars with artificial intelligence and deeplearning capabilities would allow the vehicle to step in to avoidaccidents like an instructor would.

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“That will make cars easier to learn how to drive, and my sonwould do fine,” he said. “It would drastically cut down onaccidents, too.”

Pratt also has a personal stake in enabling seniors to safelyhang onto their licenses. He and his wife both have been compelledto take away their parents’ keys when it was no longer safe forthem to drive.

“This is at the core of why I took the job with Toyota,” Prattsaid in November. “I would like to make the world be a place wherethese kinds of events are far less likely to occur for familieseverywhere around the world.”

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