If you’ve been paying attention to the news, you probably already know about Toyota’s plan to build a whole city from scratch. Known as Woven City, this prototype town is meant to be the company’s laboratory for testing autonomous vehicle technology, and it’ll be opened to “a limited number of select residents” sometime in 2021.
It’s not yet clear whether people who move into the experimental town will be selected by Toyota or will have to sign nondisclosure agreements as part of their residency agreement. But even though the idea of living in a town designed by one company sounds unsettling (and perhaps downright creepy), we’re still fascinated to hear more about it.
Located at the base of Japan’s Mount Fuji, Woven City will be home to 2,000 people, most of them employees of Toyota. It will also be open to academic and commercial partners who want to come study connected AI technology in a real-world environment.
The city will be wired for autonomous vehicles, with sensors placed throughout the roads and buildings to funnel massive amounts of data to cars. This will help them better understand what’s happening on the streets, including everything from weather patterns to cyclist behavior. And when the time comes, cars will be able to communicate with each other, giving them access to more accurate and up-to-date information.
To that end, Toyota will be working with 豊田市 ドローン companies such as CARTIVATOR and SkyDrive to develop a vehicle called the Toyota City Drone, which it says is able to “understand the traffic situation on the ground and take appropriate action.” The city’s autonomous vehicles will use this information to help navigate through dense traffic or avoid obstacles that might slow them down.
Toyota will also be working with Joby Aviation, an air mobility company that’s developing an eVTOL aircraft. It will share its expertise in manufacturing, quality, and cost control to speed up the development of this breakthrough flying taxi system, which is slated to be available for public use as early as 2023.
In the meantime, Toyota’s partnering with Uber to provide on-demand drone taxi service at the Olympics in 2020. The company will provide up to 20 of its specially-designed e-Palette vehicles for athletes and their support staff.
The Tokyo Games will be the first time that this type of technology has been used to transport attendees, and we’re sure it won’t be the last. For more on this fascinating project, check out this video from Toyota.
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