The Next New Toyota: A Personal Robot

Check it out — Toyota’s latest model. It’s got a sleek paint job, the latest electronics, stability control, and a near-silent electric drive system. Oh yeah – it also has two arms and hands.

It’s a robot. From Toyota.

I guess Toyota really is “moving forward.”

Some interesting facts:

Toyota’s long term business plan includes heavy investment in the development of personal robots for use as nurses, housekeepers, receptionists, and possibly killing machines. Ok, not killing machines (at least they’re not admitting to that).

Toyota is one of the largest employers of “robot workers” in the world, with Toyota’s Japanese plants suspected to have 4,000 to 5,000 robots, about a 1,000 of which have two arms that were designed to replace human workers in some of the more repetitive tasks.

Toyota’s Tahara plant in Mikawa Bay, Japan, was one of the first highly automated car plants in the world. Tahara builds some of the higher end Lexus models, and they come off the line with some of the industry’s lowest defect rates — only 63 problems per 1,000 vehicles. According to the Detroit Free Press, that’s about a third less defects per 1000 vehicles than BMW or Mercedes.

Toyota’s commitment to building robots has been challenged buy some people that think the developments are disturbing. While it’s hard for me to imagine a Terminator-like future where Toyota’s robots run amock, evidently some people got Toyota’s attention. They put out a press release back in 2005 “stressing their commitment to human workers.”

Do you think that someday historians will look at that press release and wonder how no one saw the rise of the machines coming??