Torc Robotics has partnered with Mila – Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute to expand research into artificial intelligence applications for autonomous trucking.

Under the partnership, Torc will establish a presence within Mila’s Montreal research ecosystem, becoming the only autonomous trucking company affiliated with the institute. The collaboration gives Torc access to researchers, faculty and students specializing in machine learning and AI development, the company said in a release.

The companies said the partnership will focus on advancing “physical AI” technologies tied to autonomous vehicle systems, including generative world models, reinforcement learning, multi-agent behavior modeling and foundation models for autonomy applications.

“Torc is focused on building safe, scalable autonomous trucks, and advancing the next generation of physical AI is central to that mission,” said Felix Heide, head of artificial intelligence at Torc. “Partnering enables deeper collaboration at the intersection of research and real-world deployment, collaboration that supports continued progress toward commercializing autonomous trucking at scale.”

Mila, founded by AI researcher Yoshua Bengio, is one of the world’s largest academic AI research centers specializing in deep learning. The institute has affiliations with Université de Montréal and McGill University and counts more than 1,500 researchers and students within its ecosystem.

Christopher Pal, core academic member at Mila and professor at Polytechnique Montréal, said the partnership will create opportunities for researchers to work on practical autonomous vehicle challenges.

“This partnership brings together academic excellence and real-world deployment, creating opportunities for our students and researchers to work on impactful challenges in physical AI while advancing the state of the art in autonomous systems,” Pal said.

Torc said the agreement builds on its existing presence in Montreal and previous collaborations with Mila dating back to 2020.

The company, an independent subsidiary of Daimler Truck, is focused on developing autonomous trucks for longhaul freight operations in the U.S. Torc operates engineering offices in Blacksburg, Va., Ann Arbor, Mich., and Montreal, along with a fleet operations facility in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.