Toyota shows off AI, self-drive techs to be used in Tokyo Games

A Toyota robot designed to retrieve shotputs, discuses and javelins.

A FLEET of robots on wheels developed by Toyota Motor — these can perform household tasks for elderly people and hospital patients — will guide guests at the Tokyo 2020 Games to wheelchair seats and will serve refreshments during events.

According to a report posted by news agency Reuters, Toyota plans to use the games to showcase its new vehicle technologies, ranging from fuel-cell buses to on-demand, self-driving taxis, as the carmaker competes with industry rivals and tech firms in developing affordable autonomous cars and electric vehicles, along with on-demand transportation services.

Toyota robots will serve guests needing assistance.

Toyota is also using pint-sized, self-driving AI robot cars to fetch javelins and hammers at track and field events. The carmaker unveiled a prototype of its next-generation field support robot, a miniature shuttle bus-shaped contraption based on its e-Palette ride-sharing vehicle under development.

The vehicle, roughly the size of a toddler’s ride-on toy car, can travel at a maximum speed of 20km/h. It is equipped with three cameras and one lidar sensor, enabling it to “see” its surroundings.

Draped around the top of its body is a band of LED lights which illuminate when the vehicle uses artificial intelligence to follow event officials toward the equipment hurled by athletes onto the pitch during shotput, discus throw, hammer throw and javelin events.

After the equipment — which can weigh as much as eight kilograms for hammers — is loaded onto the vehicle by games officials, a press of a button  will send the car zipping back to athletes for later use.

“Humans are better suited to picking up heavy equipment from the field, but for quickly transporting them to their respective return depots, that’s a job that’s best performed by robots,” Takeshi Kuwabara, a Toyota project planning manager who oversaw the robot’s development, was quoted in the Reuters report as saying.

“Our aim was to leverage the strengths of both humans and robots.”

The report said the trend of using miniature cars to fetch equipment at Olympics throwing events goes back to the 2008 Beijing Games, where rocket-shaped cars scurried along the green to collect hammers, javelins and discuses. At the 2012 Games in London, BMW developed and operated a fleet of miniature Mini Coopers to collect the discarded equipment, while pint-sized green pick-up trucks performed the task at the Rio games in 2016.

Toyota is a major sponsor of Tokyo 2020. It plans to dispatch virtual reality enabled humanoid robots and mobile telepresence robots, allowing spectators who cannot attend the games in person to experience events and meet athletes by remote.