Tokyo Olympics: from robots to self-driving cars, Japan’s tech prowess is on display at the Games
- Robots of all shapes and sizes will do everything from giving spectators at home an inside look at the events to picking up javelins and shot puts
- But the organisers are also focusing on security and cyberattacks, with hackers having targeted previous Olympics
Our Tokyo Trail series looks at key issues and athletes in the run-up to the 2020 Olympics, which are scheduled for late July. This is the third of three stories on the use of technology and innovation at the Games.
The government even planned an expo to showcase 200 additional technological innovations, with the likes of deep-sea exploration submarines and a lunar rover developed by Toyota and the Japanese space agency on display. It opened earlier this week in the capital – but with no foreigners allowed into Japan to watch the Games, the audience that will bear witness to Japan’s hi-tech prowess has shrunk even further.
It’s a development lamented by Morinosuke Kawaguchi, a technology strategist and futurist who was previously a lecturer at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
“The Games could have been a chance for Japan to show off the quality of its technological advances, which is exactly what we did when Tokyo hosted the Olympics in 1964 and introduced the first bullet trains,” he said. “I guess the biggest achievement might very well be that the Games are going ahead at all. Maybe that is what should really be celebrated.”