CITY OF THE FUTURE- A LIVING LABORATORY FOR OUR NEW TECHNOLOGIES I MIU

Our future of STEM is filled with hope and excitement – with all the fascinating and innovative technologies invented today, such as Artificial intelligence, clean energy sources, robotics, virtual reality and the list continues. Our current technology is so advanced and promising that a bright future is inevitable. But how do we actually incorporate all these mind-blowing innovations into our daily lives?

Toyota, Japan’s leading automobile manufacturer, announced its plan to build a city of the future, a “living laboratory” where it will put its existing research into a modern living setting. The plan was announced in the Consumer Electrics Show in Las Vegas in January 2020. Called the Woven City, the prototype city will be built on a 75-acre site at the base of Mount Fuji, Japan, where 2,000 residents and researchers will live full-time.

The idea is to test and develop new technologies such as autonomy, personal mobility, smart homes, artificial intelligence and hydrogen-powered infrastructure. In the Woven City, the roads will be separated according to the speed: the main streets will be only for autonomous vehicles for larger transportations, the smaller promenades for slower personal vehicles such as scooters and bicycles, and the pedestrian walks will be incorporated into parks. Separating streets depending on the type of vehicles will reduce the number of road accidents.

Houses will be built with carbon-neutral materials such as timber. The name smart house means each house will have an in-house robotic system and artificial intelligence to assist with daily living as well as to monitor health, hence helping in all aspects of life.

The Woven City will be covered by 100% clean energy. Each house will be equipped with solar panels on top of the roof, in addition to the electrical energy generated by the hydrogen fuel cells. Geothermal energy will also be used to heat the houses.

When I first read an article about this Toyota’s plan, I found it fascinating especially the idea about putting all the technologies in a real-life situation and creating an entirely new city from the ground. I agree that we will need a place where we actually take in those innovations to test them in our everyday lives, so we can see how they fit in, what problems we will have and what we can do to make it better. Toyota is starting to construct the Woven City early next year in Japan, but hopefully, we can adapt its unique concept into our own school in the very near future.

We may be able to transform Croydon High School into another living laboratory to make it a model sustainable school. By using robots in our school we will be able to do morning and afternoon registration automatically. Robots can be placed at every classroom door and take attendance without a teacher.

It can also collect health information such as the temperatures and heartbeats to monitor and check students physical and mental health. Together with artificial intelligence, this new way of registration can not only automate the tedious morning routine but can also provide useful health guides and insights. Another way of making our school a living laboratory is to introduce GPS trackers to every student and teacher. The reason why this is a great idea is that often students lose track of where their teachers are when they want to ask for something. If we have GPS trackers on everyone in the school, we will know exactly where teachers are with ease. It can also be useful for when we go on school trips by keeping track of all the students, ensuring the safety of everyone. Using up-to-date technologies to monitor and track students and teachers might raise a problem with privacy.

There are lots to think about when these innovations will actually take place in our lives, such as data privacy, moral principles and so on. Scientists believe that the very first thing to do is to make all the technologies happen, but at the same time, we need to test them out to see if those innovations will actually make us happy and peaceful.

Miu

Sources used:

The Telegraph article: “Toyota announces new 'smart city' at CES 2020” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/news/toyota-announces-new-smart-city-ces-2020/

First News, article called “City of the Future”, 17-23 January 2020 edition

Toyota Woven City https://www.woven-city.global/