Autonomous cars, service robots, smartphones, mood detectors, robotic surgeries, and what not but wait, Toyota has something bigger in the show tonight, an entire city of the future, named ‘Woven City’. An area of 175-acre has been allocated for the site at the base of Mt. Fuji in Japan for the said project. Toyota calls out all researchers, scientists and tech enthusiasts to use this platform for experimentation and testing their projects.
Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? An entire area with nothing being manually operated but robots as service providers, robotic teachers, autonomous food makers, traffic being controlled by sensors, self-driving cars or maybe customized helicopters. Popping your dream bubble, for now, this is what has been proposed by the company.
“Imagine a fully controlled site that will allow researchers, engineers, and scientists to freely test technologies,” says Akio Toyota, president of the automaker. “This will be a truly unique opportunity to create an entire community or city from the ground up.”
So, it is just a dream project? Well, Toyota hasn’t announced the date of completion or any cost analysis. But, prior experience shows that the firm has come up with each of their words. Getting a deeper insight into the plan, three sectors have been assigned for research for domains including high and low-speed autonomous vehicles or personal mobility. Breaking more of the suspense, people from diverse technological backgrounds would be practically living in the Woven city at the beginning.
You must be thinking now about the sustainability of the artificially intelligent life. Would it be eco-friendly? What about carbon emissions? Noise pollution maybe? Oh, definitely, it will deplete the ozone layer, and many such questions crowd the human mind. But, Toyota vouches it to be fully sustainable. The majority of the material for infrastructure would be wood, hence, reducing carbon usage, next to no emissions from vehicles and the power generation reliance would be on solar and hydrogen fuel cells.
“I truly believe this is a project that can benefit everyone. Not just Toyota,” Toyota said.
Talking about the credit owners for this project. One of the acknowledgment goes to a Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, whose firm has many renowned projects in its plate, including Google’s new headquarters.
So, the construction of the living laboratory is due to begin next year. In parallel to the construction of an entire city’s infrastructure, batch production of fully autonomous cars and AI robots to assist employees living there needs to be done.
Overall, the ideal proposal has left many fingers crossed, whether or not we all would be able to witness the spectacular sight within our lives!
