TOYOTA CITY: Toyota announced today that its e-Palette electric autonomous car will provide just-in-time mobility service that "go to where it is needed, when needed, and on time".
The e-Palette had its debut at last year's Tokyo Motor Show. It will provide a loop-line bus transportation service for athletes and related staff in the Olympic and Paralympic villages at the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 that were postponed until July next year.
Toyota is also working with partners to operate the vehicles in Woven City, a fully connected prototype city, while targeting commercial use in multiple areas and regions in the early 2020s.
To achieve the just-in-time mobility services, Toyota has developed an operations management system for the e-Palette based on the Toyota Production System (TPS) ideology.
This operations management system will be provided as new functions on Toyota's Mobility Services Platform and will consist of the Autonomous Mobility Management System for connecting to vehicles and the e-Palette Task Assignment Platform for connecting to people. The system will reduce customer waiting times and alleviate congestion.
The e-Palette Task Assignment Platform was introduced as a visual management function. Visualisation of abnormalities in vehicles and workers enables a single person to manage several vehicles, rather than one person continually monitoring one vehicle, which enables operation with fewer workers.
Work instructions are automatically provided to workers required for operation, including on-board operators and maintenance personnel. The system also enables shorter lead-times for maintenance and the provision of high-quality services even with limited workers.
Under the operations management system, operation schedules can be changed flexibly, with vehicles automatically dispatched and returned, according to real-time mobility needs.
When additional vehicles are introduced into a service, the intervals between vehicles are adjusted to ensure even spacing of services. Vehicle abnormalities are also automatically detected and, if that happens, the vehicles are automatically returned to the depot and replacement vehicles are immediately dispatched on the route to ensure stability of operation.
In an emergency, the vehicles can be stopped and returned to service remotely.
