Toyota's CUE7 booth at Japan Mobility Show seeks startup partners

Toyota Motor's booth at Japan Mobility Show Bizweek 2026 breaks from a conventional product display. The booth centers on CUE7, an AI basketball robot, but otherwise holds no specific exhibits. Half of the floor space is given over to two meeting rooms.

The company's aim is to build partnerships for what it calls 'even better manufacturing.' On the side walls, illustrations show Toyota's factories worldwide as test fields for this effort, and they signal a strong intent to adopt humanoids and physical AI. Toyota's 'even better manufacturing' concept rests on four elements: a 'people-centered' approach that assumes human abilities come first, TPS (Toyota Production System) to eliminate factory waste before introducing humanoids or physical AI, 'passing on the master's craft' where robots learn from master craftspeople in factories worldwide and pass that on to other engineers, and 'real-world sites' where quality improves through repeated on-site testing.

CUE7 itself is an example of a robot learning from a master — a professional basketball player — and is placed as a symbol of challenge. In the meeting rooms, Toyota staff hold in-depth talks with startups on what co-creation for 'even better manufacturing' could look like. The event runs four days, and 90 meeting bookings are already in, with few slots remaining. A Toyota representative said that anyone interested in the effort should feel free to speak up even for a casual chat, and that the 'Meet-up Box' system at Japan Mobility Show Bizweek could allow talks to continue after the event.