SMART CITIES
Toyota’s “Woven City” envisions a fully autonomous future
Set near Japan’s Mount Fuji, the smart city concept plans to bring fully autonomous mobility when it’s completed in 2024
Last time I talked about a smart city concept of the future was back in 2019, and the project under discussion was NEOM: A Tech Utopia in the Sands. It is an audacious plan by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to build a futuristic city where robots will outnumber humans — where integration of world-class technology is fueled with data and intelligence. While this sprawling 26,500-square-km (10,230-square-mile) high-tech development on the Red Sea is slated to be completed in 2025, another autonomous city project has been announced by the leading automaker Toyota.
One would think, what possible interest would an automaker have in building a smart city? But it actually makes sense when you hear the whole idea. You see the current autonomous driving is limited and dependent on the information that it can gather about the surroundings from all the onboard sensors. The idea of fully autonomous mobility that Toyota is envisioning is to use sensors and cameras scattered throughout roads, traffic lights & buildings, and perhaps even data from smartphones — to gather information on…
