Toyota, the Japanese auto giant, announced a five-year, $1 billion research and development effort in Artificial Intelligence and establishing a Silicon Valley research and development center to pursue those goals. Conceived as a research facility bridging basic science and commercial engineering, it will be organized as a new company named Toyota Research Institute. Toyota will initially have a laboratory adjacent to Stanford University and another near M.I.T. in Cambridge, Mass. The Toyota Research Institute will be led by Gill Pratt, who recently joined Toyota from DARPA where he ran the Robotics Challenge, an event that promoted work on robots that can work with humans.

In June 2015, the US Navy announced that they were set to christen their tenth littoral combat ship (LCS), the future USS Gabrielle Giffords (LCS 10), on Saturday June 13^th at the Austal USA shipyard in Mobile, Alabama. This ship was named in honor of former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords who resigned from Congress in 2011 to recover from wounds sustained in an assassination attempt. She was known for her support of the military and veterans.

Embraer, a Brazilian aircraft manufacturer, reported a successful close to the calendar year 2014, keeping itself in a neck-and-neck race with its counterpart Bombardier for the title of third largest aircraft manufacturer in the world. Currently, only Boeing and Airbus are larger. TAM Linhas Aereas, a Brazilian airline, is in the process of finalizing an order for thirty regional jets from Embraer, in efforts to strengthen its domestic Brazilian network.

Headquartered in Warren, Michigan, Acco Systems, Inc. is a designer and manufacturer of standard and custom automated conveyor, rail, and material handling systems. Founded in 1919, Acco Systems’ portfolio of products includes belt/chain skid conveyors, automated electrified monorail systems, automated storage/retrieval systems (AS/RS), skillet conveyors, towline systems, horizontal and pendulum conveyors, twin-trolley systems, and overhead and inverted power-and-free systems. Today, Acco Systems, Inc. operates under Bietigheim-Bissingen, Germany-based Durr AG, a global firm specializing in mechanical and plant engineering technologies.

AirBorn Inc., although not a Fortune 500 company or universally known company by any means, is a very well-known manufacturing company within its industry, especially when it comes to any client that uses connectors and connector products regularly. AirBorn offers thousands of connector products that are used in the following industries:

In 1924, science historian and civic leader Bern Dibner founded Burndy Engineering Company, a name which was based on the contraction of his first name and last initial. Dr. Dibner, during his time as an engineer working on the electrical system in Cuba, realized the need to improve methods of connecting electrical conductors and also to join power system substations. As such, Dr. Dibner successfully designed a universal connector that enabled a unified grid.

Joseph O. Eaton, Henning O. Taube, and Viggo V. Torbenson incorporated Torbensen Gear and Axle Co in New Jersey in 1911 in order to manufacturer Torbensen’s patented internal-gear truck axle. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions over the years in the automotive industry, the company eventually became known as Eaton Corporation.