Pittsburgh Innovation Lab

Hirotsugu Takeuchi
DENSO Corporation CTO

The automotive industry has long been called a "once-in-a-century period of great change," and with the speed of modern day technological innovation is continues its acceleration year by year. Deep learning, which was announced in 2012, has been applied to various fields and brought about technological innovation. For example, in certain operational domains, autonomous driving have already become a service that the general public can use on a daily basis.

DENSO has established the Pittsburgh Innovation Laboratory (PIL) as a base for autonomous driving research in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where concepts become cutting edge, fundamental research. In addition to the base technology developed in the conventional automotive produce cycle, PIL continues to embrace and explore new technological directions in collaboration with nearby universities and startups. PIL is well positioned to create amazing technologies that will contribute to the future mobility society.

Minoru Okada
Sr Director, Advanced Mobility Systems

DENSO has been conducting research and development on automated driving for more than a decade, aiming to realize comfortable and accident-free mobility in 2030. However, technologies related to automated driving are moving into a new phase, as exemplified by the recent Generative AI. To keep up with this dizzying change and to promote new developments, we have launched our lab in Pittsburgh. By strengthening our ties with local players, we can adopt the latest technological trends and quickly verify systems to prepare for the next generation of technology.

I expect PIL to be a source of future competitiveness for DENSO by proactively acquiring technologies that no one has noticed.

Hironobu Fujiyoshi
Technical Advisor

It is a great honor for me to contribute to the research activities of the Pittsburgh Innovation Laboratory (PIL) through a cross-appointment between the university and DENSO.

My mission is to help establish PIL as a vital hub for talent and technology exchange between universities and industries in Japan and the United States. I firmly believe that by combining the strengths of leading U.S. institutions—particularly Carnegie Mellon University—in cutting-edge fields such as robotics and AI, with DENSO’s advanced research and development capabilities, we can create a new model for international innovation and talent development.

I am confident that this initiative will promote global collaborative research, foster the next generation of innovators, and grow into a platform that strengthens industry-academia cooperation and mutual understanding between Japan and the U.S.

Shinya Tanaka
Lab Director

My mission is to grow the Pittsburgh Innovation Lab (PIL) here at DENSO into a center for technology and human resource exchange and to promote the development of next-generation automated driving technologies to realize accident free mobility.

The technological evolution over the past few years has been remarkable, with new technologies continuously being announced. We work with Pittsburgh’s top players to acquire cutting-edge knowledge, incorporate it into DENSO's development, and repeatedly verify the technology’s feasibility. As a member of the Pittsburgh region, we will continue to develop the PIL from the two perspectives of people and technology.