HONDA The Power of Dreams

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DREAMS Marika Mochizuki

Hands-free
personal mobility:
UNI-ONE

Marika Mochizuki

Corporate Strategy Operations, Corporate Strategy Division
Creative Solutions Center, Innovation Studio, Staff Engineer
Responsible for UX and styling at UNI-ONE.
Drives the planning and conceptualization of AR experiences – from ideation to proof of concept and pilot experiments.
*1: User Experience
*2: Augmented Reality

Hi Ms. Mochizuki, what is your dream?

I want to create a vehicle that people’s lives to be free.

What is the driving force behind your dream?

When I was a child, I was living in a mountainous area and it was very difficult to get very far on my own. I realized how important it was to be able to go anywhere I wanted to, whenever and in whatever way I wished. This experience was what shaped my dream.

When I entered a university, I got up a courage to live in Kyushu. This was a place that I could not quickly access from my hometown. When I was a child, I grew up by being told to be dangerous to even ride a bicycle. When I went to the university, I got a license and got on a motorbike, which made me feel the best I’d ever felt. When I was living in the countryside, I felt a great deal of physical and psychological constraint. There were so many things that I was not allowed to do or could not do. When I was set free, I was aware of how wonderful my life was. I would like to help those who feel the same way, and I realized that life could be altered through small changes. Therefore, I very much value UNI-ONE, which I am making right now.

Did you confront any difficulties on the way to achieving your dream?

As I mentioned above, I am currently making a vehicle called UNI-ONE. UNI-ONE will be a very new type of vehicle that will allow people to move by shifting their body weights. There is not a single “correct answer” from the viewpoint of technology and design. One important issue is to think about how UNI-ONE can be a vehicle that can be used easily by anyone. I am concerned about/am worried about working to achieve this every day.

No one knows what the “right answer” is. Therefore, all team members are strongly committed to the release of this vehicle throughout the world. They candidly raise opinions and discuss them with each other so that the best answer can be found.

What is your next challenge?

UNI-ONE may look like a future vehicle or an experimental vehicle. However, we earnestly hope that our customers (such as those who are reading this interview) will use it. In order to make this a reality, we want to conduct jobs that would disseminate information on UNI-ONE in the future as well.

People are getting interested in this vehicle throughout society. However, there still exist several stages that allow/have them to say, “I would like to go to school by taking UNI-ONE,” for example. We would like many people to get on this vehicle as soon as possible. However, there are absolutely no laws or steps to take that would allow this vehicle to emerge throughout the world in a way that would be comparable to automobiles and motorbikes, for example. There remain various issues for establishing social infrastructure for UNI-ONE concerning what rules would be appliable to UNI-ONE.

I originally joined Honda as a motorbike designer. At that time, I thought our motorbike was the best, that it set people free, and that it was a great vehicle. When I encountered the idea of UNI-ONE for the first time, I thought that UNI-ONE would be a mere vehicle that allowed researchers to show off their technologies in a favorable light. However, through a demonstration experiment, I actually saw little children and people with lower-limb disabilities ride on UNI-ONE, and I could see that they were moved by it. Through this experience, I strongly felt that this vehicle was a mysterious/strange thing, but that it would be definitely necessary in this world. I wanted to create a society in which elderly people and people with lower-limb disabilities would be able to have lots of fun going wherever they want to go actively because of UNI-ONE, instead of feeling that going out was a troublesome process that made them tired.

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