Smart-City Driverless-Vehicle Pilot Project to Enhance Mobility and Healthcare in Kamakura & Fujisawa Areas

Nov 24, 2021 12:27 JST

Source: Mitsubishi Corporation

TOKYO, Nov 24, 2021 - (JCN Newswire) - Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) has been in talks with Kamakura City's municipal government about developing its urban core and surrounding region into a smart city. Recently, our partnership joined forces with four other interests to commence a pilot project that will combine autonomous-driving technologies and healthcare services in Shonan Health Innovation Park (Shonan iPark). Along with Shonan iPark, our other partners on this project are Tokushukai Shonan Kamakura General Hospital (Kamakura General), Macnica, Inc. and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation.

One of the self-driving vehicles

The pilot-project site (Photo courtesy of Shonan iPark website)

Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) has been in talks with Kamakura City's municipal government about developing its urban core and surrounding region into a smart city. Recently, our partnership joined forces with four other interests to commence a pilot project that will combine autonomous-driving technologies and healthcare services in Shonan Health Innovation Park (Shonan iPark). Along with Shonan iPark, our other partners on this project are Tokushukai Shonan Kamakura General Hospital (Kamakura General), Macnica, Inc. and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation.

One of the keys to the scheme will be making local medical services more convenient and accessible. Recently, MC has been working with the five parties to monitor roughly 1,000 residents of Kamakura and Fujisawa cities and augment those cities' various medical services with self-driving vehicles.

The pilot project will likely involve the vehicles traveling to and from healthcare facilities to perform examinations, check patients' vital signs and take their medical histories using digital technologies. If the pilot project is successful and the program can be rolled out permanently, then it should improve accessibility to patients' homes and local healthcare facilities, enable those facilities to provide smoother treatments and reduce patient wait times.

Financial support for this pilot project is coming by way of Kanagawa Prefecture's publicly-funded program to assist businesses that are engaged in trials of robotics technologies, as well as funding from the cities of Kamakura and Fujisawa.

MC has been nominated by Kamakura City as a private partner in its "Super City Concept." We plan on making full use of our global business network, boosting the area's value through collaborations with its local enterprises, and examining ways to introduce a variety of municipal services that are both safe and dedicated to improving quality of life.

In this new age of digital transformation, MC has been leveraging advanced technologies to introduce a wealth of urban services both in Japan and around the world. We have also been combining those efforts with energy-transformation initiatives aimed at lowering or even eliminating carbon emissions. To help realize distributed, carbon-neutral societies, we remain committed to "smart" urban developments that represent the next generation of city-management business, and we are pleased to do our part to make services in Kamakura and its surrounding region more convenient and environmentally friendly.

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Sectors: Automotive, EVs, Transportation