Monday’s Toyota CES press conference was all about Woven City, the carmaker’s planned community at the base of Mt. Fuji. Robotics will undoubtedly play a major role in the company’s bid to automate as much of the 2,000-person city as possible, including autonomous cars and drones designed to chaperone people back home after dark.
One big piece of this is on-going efforts by the company’s research wing – TRI – to improve how robots learn. The institute recently announced a partnership with Boston Dynamics, that will bring its imitation learning tech to the new electric Atlas humanoid robot.
A delicate task like t-shirt folding is as good a place to start as any. CEO Akio Toyoda showed off how the company taught robot arms to fold t-shirts Japanese style. Starting with a pair of manual graspers, the human demonstrates the correct way to fold a shirt. The system is able to pick up the skill overnight, according to Toyota.
T-shirt folding is, of course, simply an example of dexterity. Notably, among the planned 2,000 residents expected to move into Woven City are a number of retired people. Over the past several decades, Japan has increasingly looked to automation in a bid to assist its aging population.
Woven City is, in part, a demonstration of what the future of caring for older adults could look like.
