Self-driving cars to javelin cart: Toyota's robots set for Olympic debut
When athletes and organisers descend on Tokyo for the 2020 Olympic Games , they’ll be ferried around in autonomous cars, while torch relay runners will be accompanied by AI-equipped cars. Robots will ferry javelins and hammers. All told, Toyota Motor Corp will provide 3,700 vehicles, including dozens of self-driving cars, about 500 fuel-cell vehicles and 850 battery-electric cars to the international sports competition. As a top sponsor of the Tokyo Olympics and an automaker facing a murky future when gasoline-powered engines will fade away, Toyota is doing everything it can to market its transition into an eventual provider of on-demand transportation for consumers and businesses, instead of being merely an industrial manufacturer. “ We want to use the Olympics and Paralympics that happen every two years as a milestone,” Masaaki Ito, general manager of Toyota’s Olympic and Paralympic Division, said in an interview. “2020 will be a good time to show our transformation into a