Toyota's City Drone Project is Moving Forward

 

Toyota's plan to turn a former car factory into a test city of the future is finally moving forward. It calls the 175-acre site Woven City, and the company says it will help develop and continuously improve new technologies and systems that "amplify human abilities".

The main goal is to demonstrate what mobility as a service means in practice, and this will include testing autonomous vehicles and innovative street design, smart home technology, robotics and new mobility products on real people who will live there full time. The city will also serve as an incubator for emerging technologies, and the company says it is already looking at the possibility of using hydrogen fuel cells to power the entire city.

The first project to be undertaken is what Toyota calls the "flying car." It is being developed by a volunteer group of automotive, drone and aviation industry professionals who call themselves Cartivator. Their aim is to create an urban aerial vehicle that can be used as a taxi. The one-fifth scale SD-01 technology demonstrator aircraft made its first outdoor flight on June 3, 2017 and was designed as both an eVTOL (electronic vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft and road vehicle. The prototype has a metal skeleton frame and eight propellers as well as skid-type landing gear.

To make the flying car actually work, a 豊田市 ドローン variety of sensors needs to be set up throughout roads and buildings to supply massive amounts of data that can then be processed by computers in the vehicle. This is something that's currently impossible to do in a normal city due to the lack of infrastructure. That's why cities need to be wired for the future, and this is why companies like Google and Sidewalk Labs are being criticised by many for their opacity and secretiveness about their plans for building sensor-laden new communities.

A key part of the Toyota City Drone project is a partnership with Zipline International, which has developed an autonomous aerial delivery system that uses drones to deliver pharmaceuticals and daily goods to remote areas in Africa. This partnership will see the creation of a drone launch and recovery base on Fukue Island in Goto City, which will be equipped with catapults*, drones and a system to recover the drones after they have delivered their cargo. The drones will be deployed to areas of the city that are difficult to access by ground transportation and can be re-used multiple times before they need to be returned to the base for refuelling.

The company has not yet confirmed which drone model it will use in the flying car project, or whether it will be the e-Palette vehicle that was first announced in 2018 and is designed as an autonomous mobility as a service platform. However, the company will probably leverage its famous manufacturing expertise in order to produce high-quality, complex hardware at scale for this purpose. This could be a significant advantage over competitors who are relying on crowdfunding and other donations to fund development of their vehicles.