Photo: Toyota Motor Corporation / Courtesy
Toyota served as one of the main sponsors of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Gamesand although they have already finished, they served as a testing laboratory for one of their autonomous vehicles, one of the technologies that is positioned as the mobility of the future.
In that sense, for the transfer of these athletes, The Asian firm has made available to delegations one of its autonomous and electric models.
He has the same name e-Palette and supported all athletes’ needs and staff of the Olympic Village. It has three different sizes that vary from 4 to 7 meters, while at a technological level it has cameras and sensors needed so that it can be driven without the need of a person.
On an aesthetic level, the Toyota autonomous vehicle It can be customized in various ways with a wide range of paints. Inside it has a ground floor designed for disabled people, something really fundamental that is making a lot of noise in Tokyo during the Paralympic Games.
The incident involving e-Palette with a Paralympic athlete
Beyond its interesting features, During the Olympic Games Toyota announced that it would retire the entire e-Palette fleet after one of them ran over an athlete.
Fortunately it happened at a very low speed and it did not go any further, however, in a preventive and extreme manner the Asian manufacturer chose to remove them from circulation in the Olympic Village.
He autonomous vehicle circulated at 2 kilometers per hour when hit Aramitsu Kitazono, blind judoka. After all this situation managed to determine that the cause of the accident was human factor.
When the cars detect a pedestrian through their sensors, then the two security operators inside they resume their march manually.
Now, in this particular incident, one of the operators interpreted that the athlete would realize the presence of the e-Palette without knowing that he was a visually impaired person. Of course, before knowing this Toyota removed them from circulation to avoid similar events.
After analyzing the situation, Toyota put them back in the Olympic Village with a series of updates to learn from mistakes.
Now a External sound warns about the proximity of the e-Palette when driving near a pedestrian. On the other hand, operators remain responsible for starting and braking the vehicles manually, receiving additional training that includes similar scenarios.
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