Back in July, the Japanese government outlined an intriguing idea to connect major cities with what sounded like a giant "conveyor belt" for cargo. Now we have a clearer picture of what that “Auto Flow Road” will look like.
Trucks are the go-to for moving cargo between and within cities, but they’re not a perfect solution. They’re big and noisy, interrupt traffic flow, spew carbon dioxide at alarming rates, and require a lot of human drivers.
That last point is the one that the Japanese government seems most concerned about currently. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) expects that by 2030, the transportation industry will see a capacity shortfall of 34% compared to now.
The Auto Flow Road project is designed to tackle that problem. Essentially it would be a dedicated highway for autonomous cargo pods, letting them shuttle goods day and night without getting in the way of the good old-fashioned human-driven traffic. These lanes would make use of existing road space, such as shoulders or medians, and sections may even be built into underground tunnels.
Depots would be built in major prefectures, and these would be largely autonomous too. When cargo arrives at its nearest depot, autonomous forklifts unload it and pack them into the pods. These then drive themselves down the Auto Flow Road to the depot closest to their destination. From there, trucks (or maybe drones or other vehicles) would carry them the rest of the way.
But the most intriguing part is that the pods actually sort themselves en route. They can park themselves in a “Buffering Lane” in the middle of the Auto Flow Road, to wait for others going to the same place or to time their arrival better.
There’s a few reasons for doing that. For one, you don’t need big storage spaces at depots – you can use the hundreds of miles between them. It could also reduce congestion by spreading the flow of traffic out across the whole day and night. And arrival times can be coordinated more precisely, so human truck drivers aren’t waiting around too long.
That might sound like the parked pods are sitting ducks for thieves out on the road there, but the renders so far all show the Auto Flow Road covered by a glass dome. Keeping people out could be the goal there, to prevent accidents, traffic jams or unsavory characters rifling through your Amazon-ordered undies.
To make sure it all flows properly, the cargo needs to fit on pallets measuring 1.1 m (3.6 ft) wide and stand up to 1.8 m (5.9 ft) tall. Smaller and irregular-shaped packages can be stacked inside cages of the same dimensions.
If the idea works, the system could perform the work of 12,000 to 17,000 people per day, according to the Japanese government. That could be a major benefit, since online orders continue to increase while the human workforce decreases.
Of course, it’s a pretty major undertaking, and the Japanese government is currently taking expressions of interest from private companies for building the infrastructure or components of it.
The first goal is to build a test track along the 500-km (310-mile) highway between Tokyo and Osaka, Japan’s largest artery. Test runs are planned to begin in 2027, with full operation by the mid-2030s.
Check out an animated render of the system in the video below (you might need to switch on English subtitles).
Then again, it's probably more economical to load several non-motorized pods on a larger vehicle, using regular roads ... which is just reinventing the semi. You could also do this system with rail (more efficient than rubber tires), with small high-speed trains. Automated system would load/unload these trains rapidly. You simply don't need individual pods between cities.
Back to the drawing board!