In 2019 Toyota announced their e-pallete vehicle during the Toyota show, an autonomous, battery-powered vehicle built specifically to transport athletes around the athlete village at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. The 20 supplied vehicles are level 4 autonomous meaning they are completely capable are driving themselves within certain limits such as them driving low speeds and each vehicle having a human on board safety operator to monitor the vehicles movements.

https://youtu.be/QtEQvZ84uzw?si=f8HVb9nbvr9--ptn

Throughout the development process of the vehicles, athletes, especially Paralympians, helped the developers to better understand how they could adapt and upgrade the e-Palette to better meet the need for simple, convenient and comfortable mobility. Physical features of the design included large doors and electric ramps to allow groups of athletes including Paralympians to board quickly and easily. The e-palette uses advanced sensors like cameras and LiDAR to constantly monitors for obstacles with a 360-degree view around the vehicle.

However, the downfall of this vehicle was during the proposed 2020 Olympics when one of the vehicles collided with a visually impaired Japanese athlete at a junction, injuring them and causing them to have to withdraw from their event. Despite the sensors detecting the pedestrian crossing and activated the automatic brake, there was impact between the two before the vehicle halted. The use of the autonomous vehicles were then not used for numerous days while they looked into making improvements and liaised with local police before making improvements such as the warning sounds being turned up and increasing to 2 safety operators.

https://youtu.be/_goYFntHrvE?si=BRBGodtPQdHSt48D

As Toyota continue to develop their autonomous vehicles post the Tokyo games, they do acknowledge the fact that these vehicles are not ready for “real roads” as of yet due to its operation around those who are visually impaired or have other disabilities. Within the future, Toyota want to commercialise so it can work with companies including Amazon, Pizza Hut and Uber and further technology.

<aside> 💭 Reflection

This was really interesting to read about as I had previously heard a little about them during the 2021 Olympic period and I believe it demonstrates well how autonomous vehicles can be really good but also the risks that come with them. It gives us an insight into the future of autonomous vehicles and how they might become popular commercially and have a bigger presence in the future however at this moment in time, they still require human control and intervention

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