Following the success of the Land Cruiser on Earth, Toyota now plans to launch its ‘Lunar Cruiser’ to the moon. It is working on a vehicle to investigate the moon’s surface alongside the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, with intentions to help people live on the moon by 2040 and eventually on Mars, according to company officials.
The Lunar Cruiser will be released in the late 2020s and is a tribute to Toyota’s legendary Land Cruiser SUV. According to Takao Sato, the head of Toyota Motor Corporation’s Lunar Cruiser program, it is based on the idea that humans can eat, work, sleep, and communicate with others safely in cars, and that the same can be done in space.
“We see space as an area for our once-in-a-century transformation. By going to space, we may be able to develop telecommunications and other technology that will prove valuable to human life,” Sato told Associated Press.
Gitai Japan Inc, a Toyota-affiliated firm, has developed a robotic arm for the Lunar Cruiser that will allow it to carry out activities such as inspection and maintenance. Its ‘grapple fixture’ allows the arm’s end to be adjusted to mimic scooping, sweeping, and lifting tools.
Sho Nakanose, Gitai’s Chief Executive, believes that the difficulty of launching into space has been substantially solved, but that working in space comes at a high cost and poses significant risks to astronauts. He believes that this is an area where robots can be useful.
Since its foundation in the 1930s, Toyota has been anxious about losing its main industry owing to changing times, and has dabbled in homes, boats, jets, and robots.
The Woven City, a net-connected sustainable living quarter near Mount Fuji, will begin construction this year. Aside from these, it is becoming increasingly interested in the moon.
Toyota engineer Shinichiro Noda is ecstatic about the lunar initiative, which is an extension of the automaker’s long-standing mission of serving customers while taking into account the possibility that the moon could provide crucial resources for life on Earth.
“Sending our cars to the moon is our mission,” Noda said. Toyota has cars almost everywhere, “but this is about taking our cars to somewhere we have never been,” he remarked.
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