Toyota Is Building a Futuristic Prototype City Powered by Hydrogen
Channel: Imagination
Date: 11/06/2021

Toyota Is Building a Futuristic Prototype City Powered by Hydrogen

In this video, I'm going to talk about how Toyota is  Building a Futuristic Prototype City Powered by Hydrogen. Most of the focus for making self-driving cars a widespread reality is on the cars themselves, specifically on the technology they require to safely perceive and interact with the world around them: sensors, cameras, lidar, and the like, all sitting on software platforms that integrate AI and machine learning. But what if it’s not all about the cars? Maybe it’s equally important to get cities ready to adapt to a driverless future. That’s what the world’s biggest carmaker is betting on, anyway. South of Tokyo at the base of Mount Fuji, Toyota is spearheading a project it calls Woven City. Plans for the futuristic prototype city were unveiled at CES in 2020, and construction began this past February. This week Toyota announced it’s partnering with Japanese petroleum company ENEOS to build a hydrogen fuel cell system that will be the city’s source of power. Woven City’s green power sources are just one piece of the futuristic puzzle that the prototype will put together. The city’s smart homes will reportedly be able to automatically take out residents’ trash and restock their refrigerators (using grocery-shopping robots?), and sensor-based AI will even monitor residents’ health. Whether people will welcome this sort of “service” or see it as an invasion of privacy remains to be determined. Woven City residents will include Toyota employees and their families, retirees, and scientists, among others. More than 3,000 people have already applied, and the company plans to launch the city with 2,000 residents at first, then add to that over time. “Building a complete city from the ground up, even on a small scale like this, is a unique opportunity to develop future technologies, including a digital operating system for the city’s infrastructure. With people, buildings and vehicles all connected and communicating with each other through data and sensors, we will be able to test connected AI technology… in both the virtual and the physical realms … maximizing its potential,” said Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corporation, in a press release. Watching how Toyota’s Woven City experiment unfolds could be a telling lens into the future, not just for driverless cars, but for smart technology, clean energy, and the willingness of residents to live among millions of sensors collecting all sorts of data about them and their day-to-day lives. Toyota chose the name “Woven City” because the company got its start making steam-powered looms in the 1890s; in this case, what’s being woven together is the technology, infrastructure, and services for the cities of the future. Construction is scheduled to be completed in 2024.