Toyota is more than just an automaker. It also engineers personal walking devices to assist people with mobility difficulties, and it dabbles in robotic development. Now, pooling its knowledge of automaking, personal mobility devices, and robotics, the marque has unveiled a concept mobility device that has “legs” instead of wheels. Now that’s thinking outside the box.
Called Walk Me, it is a chair robot that traverses using, well, legs. While some outfits are still working on making wheelchairs climb stairs, Toyota’s Walk Me uses legs to do so. Since it has legs, it works well on uneven terrain, too. Mobility with legs is not entirely new; recently, Kawasaki pitched the radical idea of a four-legged “motorcycle,” and in the area of personal mobility devices, Suzuki’s MOQBA already presented a similar idea two years ago. However, the MOQBA is a hybrid. It has legs with motorized wheels. Or was it wheels with legs? Anyhoo, the Walk Me represents a breakthrough in personal mobility devices.
Its four-legged locomotion is part biomimicry, as the movement is inspired by nature’s best climbers (read: not humans), such as goats and crabs. Is it just me, or do I see Tachikoma, the AI walker/roller tank from the Ghost in the Shell lore, in this thing?
The device can collapse down so it fits inside the trunk of a car. We observed that it has a joystick for control, but it also supports voice commands for true hands-free mobility. Meanwhile, AI-powered obstacle detection with LiDAR and radar ensures it will not run into anything. It is equipped with a battery that offers a full day of use on a single charge.
It is worth noting that information regarding this revolutionary personal mobility device is few and far between. Unless you were at the show or reading local Japanese media, you are not getting real information. What we learned is mainly from RoboPhil, who appears to have pulled his sources from Japanese media.
Images: Toyota.
