Three USC faculty members will lead four research projects funded by the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), spanning humanoid robotics, autonomous driving and social barriers to artificial intelligence (AI) adoption in office environments. The studies are part of TRI’s latest University Research Program (URP 3.0), a five-year initiative supporting 69 research projects from 31 universities across the nation, launched in 2026. The selected USC principal investigators are Yue Wang, Stephen Tu and Mayank Kejriwal, with Wang leading two projects. Awarded a combined $3 million in funding, the USC-led projects officially launched last month and will continue for three years. One of Wang’s projects focuses on making autonomous vehicles capable of navigating safely anywhere in the world by teaching them to reason through unfamiliar and extreme road scenarios. His second project focuses on developing humanoid robots that can learn and adapt in real time through daily interactions and feedback within home environments. Tu leads a project focusing on creating a smarter digital testing tool that predicts how well a robot will perform new tasks before it is ever switched on. Kejriwal leads a project that examines the human side of technology to understand why.