Top-selling carmaker Toyota opened its new high-tech village in Japan on Thursday, an experimental project to test autonomous driving and other futuristic developments.

It is touted as a real-life setting in which to trial myriad inventions, from flying taxis to robot pets and drones that escort you home at night.

Around 360 Toyota staff and others related to the company will soon move in to smart homes in its "Woven City".

"This is a test course for the future, not just a town," Toyota's chairman Akio Toyoda told an opening event, according to national broadcaster NHK.

The number of residents in the cluster of homes built on a disused Toyota factory at the base of Mount Fuji is eventually expected to grow to 2,000, the firm says.

Toyoda has previously called it a "living laboratory w

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