New Patent of Automatic Driving Working Car for Toyota Home Decoration Store

Recently, another Toyota patent was exposed. The patent aims to facilitate customers' shopping. It can not only make the goods automatically go home with customers, but also make the payment without taking the goods.

According to foreign media reports, it seems that Toyota is exploring new ways of travel, but not for human beings, but for goods and supplies in stores. Recently, the Japanese carmaker applied for a patent called "home improvement store autonomous workhorse". The specific idea is: if you drive a car to the local home decoration store for shopping, but you buy goods that cannot be loaded by a truck (such as Toyota tundra), the customer does not need to rent a trailer or pay for the store to deliver goods. You can call an autonomous "work car", put the purchased goods in, and then let the car automatically follow the customer home. Once back home, after unloading all the goods, perhaps with the help of the robot arm, the customer can let the car drive automatically and return to the store.

Like many patents, this patent also leaves a lot of design space for potential applications in the future. Toyota said that the self driving work vehicle can use a variety of energy sources such as batteries, fuel cells and fossil fuels, and does not even need to be a wheeled vehicle. The main structure of this self driving work vehicle may be similar to cars, trucks, scooters, boats, water motorcycles, aircraft, golf carts or such things.

TOYOTA engineers also envisage that the autopilot can also be a shopping assistant, moving with customers in stores and tracking customers' actions when customers move. Once the customer has determined the goods to be purchased, the loading actuator (such as machine arm) can assist the movement of the goods and put the goods into its storage device. The automatic driving platform even includes a payment terminal to realize on-the-spot payment, which is very convenient. Moreover, the car can also run between different stores, so that customers can not only do not need to put goods in their hands when shopping, but also take goods home remotely.

At present, Toyota declined to comment on the patent application, but it is well known that applying for a patent does not mean that the product will be launched in the end. However, Toyota did announce in December 2019 that it would license some of its intellectual property rights to others. The project, called Toyota IP solutions, mainly includes four aspects: all-round structure color, bioactive materials, nano material synthesis and electronic thermal management. Home furnishing shops, weird, self driving cars are not included.