The 2020 Olympics will be an excellent opportunity for Japan to show its technological innovations. It could be a showcase of a futuristic society.
Robot technologies will be applied to travel guides at International airports, tourist information centers and public transportation facilities using multilingual audio translation system. Visitors are sure to see humanoid robots in the place of human concierges at airports and hotels, where they’ll be on hand to meet and greet you.
Tourists can choose, for example, to hang out with robot helpers of all sizes and sorts that offer up tips on the best transport, food and entertainment options in Tokyo.
Japanese company Robot Taxi Inc. is also working on driverless vehicles that visitors will be to ride from stadium to stadium.
Banks are working on ATMs that allow foreign visitors to withdraw yen with cards issued overseas. Three banks aim to make about 1,000 of these ATMs ready in time for the Olympics.
Some firms are focusing on creating surveillance cameras equipped with sophisticated analytical capabilities, anticipating a need for stepped-up security measures in urban areas, including for the identification of suspicious individuals.
During sporting events, visitors might catch human referees using 3D laser technology to analyze a gymnast’s complex motions. An AI (artificial intelligence) technology that can precisely score gymnastics performances is now being developed. Gymnastic performances are so highly skilled that sometimes human eyes have difficulty capturing every motion. 3D sensors which emit laser beams 2.3 million times a second capture any motion of the skeleton of a gymnast.
This ensures an accurate counting of the number of twists and measurement of the arms’ angles. The AI program comes up with a score by checking with the scoring standards that the AI has already learned.