Japan announces ‘Robot Olympics’ to coincide with 2020 Tokyo summer games

As the world’s fittest prepare for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, their mechanical counterparts will be gearing up for a showdown of their own.

A World Robot Summit will be held alongside the athletics tournament, the Japanese government has announced. Details are thin on the ground, but “competitions and exhibits” featuring humanoid and industrial robots have been promised. “We would like to gather robots using cutting edge technology and ideas from across the world,” said Hiroshige Seko, Minister for Economy, Trade and Industry.

Having come sixth at the Rio Olympics, Japan will hope to do better in the robot stakes. It leads the world in robotics. Last year, cute android Kirobo grabbed the world’s attention when it accompanied Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata to the International Space Station. Back on earth, businesses are going mad for Pepper, a friendly humanoid bot who greets customers with selfies and leads staff in aerobics sessions.

robot pepper 2

Pepper robot

Japan can expect stiff competition at the summit. Chinese firms are becoming dab hands at quirky concepts: a temple near Beijing recently set up a robot monk – complete with touchscreen – designed to draw in the smartphone generation with its pre-programmed mantras. Meanwhile, Guangzhou province has pledged to use robotic technologies in 80% of its manufacturing operations by 2020.

Across the Pacific, the USA is emerging as Japan’s greatest rival. The use of American robots in the cleanup of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant – their Nipponese equivalents couldn’t hack it – came as a shock to Japan’s industry. Since then American robotics have taken great strides, not least thanks to a flurry of investment from Silicon Valley. Tech giants Facebook and Google are squaring off in the field of “deep learning”, an AI technique whereby machines “teach” themselves to mimic sophisticated neural processes (such as recognising objects in photos) by analysing vast datasets.

Amazon placed its faith in industrial robots when it snapped up developer Kiva in 2012. Its warehouses now employ some 30,000 bots. The company has set off something of an arms race, with other retailers rushing to develop their own mechanical workforce. Meanwhile, firms like Google and Tesla continue to invest in self-driving cars, despite the fatal crash of a Tesla car in May.

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