Hello! I’m Sugiemon, a lifehacker. Together with my partner RumiCar, I’m out hacking the region again in search of seeds of the future!
Today we came to JR Hitachi Station in Ibaraki Prefecture.
It is known as one of the most beautiful station buildings in the world. The all-glass observation deck, designed to jut out toward the sea, gives you the curious feeling of floating in mid-air.
I set my partner RumiCar down in the middle of that spectacular view.
People passing by stopped and wondered, “What on earth is this?” That moment when a beautiful landscape and a small piece of the latest technology hack people’s curiosity is simply priceless.
What is RumiCar?
When someone asks, “What is this car?”, here is my answer.
RumiCar is not just a mini car.
It is the friendliest autonomous-driving learning platform in the world, where anyone can learn how self-driving works, and actually write and run their own algorithms.
Talking about the future of autonomous driving in Hitachi, the town of manufacturing
In front of the station stands a monument of a giant turbine blade.
This is the founding place of Hitachi, Ltd., a place that has supported Japanese engineering — and running the little RumiCar here felt deeply meaningful.
Just as giant turbines once powered Japan’s industry, this small seed of technology should drive the autonomous-driving society of the next generation.
I will be delighted if meeting RumiCar here becomes the moment people realize: “I can build the future myself!”
This has been RumiCar, the platform that makes it easy to get started with autonomous driving. Someday I want to come back here in a self-driving car!