The Tokyo Olympic Robots
npr.org
npr.org
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraitowa_and_Someity#Selectio...
And the mascot robots were designed around this, which isn't clear in the article.
I feel like any article on the Olympics should mention that >80% of the Japanese population was against holding the Olympics at this time [1]. And that Tokyo is now experiencing the highest SARS-CoV-2 daily infection rates it's seen to date. While government officials claim this is unrelated to holding the largest sporting event in the world [2].
My gut feeling is that this recent spike is partly the "lockdown rejection" that we saw across the US last year, in particular stuff like trying to ban alcohol sales in restaurants seemed to have really made a lot of people just kind of give up with the state of emergency recommendations.
And like... there aren't any spectators right? The amount of people at the event is maybe comparable to how many people are at a local supermarket in one day.
Not to defend the gov'ts decision to do the olympics, or any of this thing in general. There will probably not be many real consequences to these people, and people are watching it on TV, but it definitely doesn't feel very "state of emergency" and sets the wrong tone for this moment. It's just that this spike doesn't feel single-factor.
Japan's low vaccination rate means nothing but masks are holding delta at bay.
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14393135
However I would guess people are less likely to exercise self restraint when you're holding a huge unnecessary event. When vaccine availability is unclear and vaccines are inconsistently deployed. And when there's limited financial support.
More precisely, preselected by a committee, who then had elementary schools choose the winner.
There also was wide plans to have elementary school kids go watch the Olympics, it seemed a really big effort went into drilling the event into them.
I spotted in some photo from the Olympics the vans which look just like the "rugbyball bot" but a full size for passengers.
Edit: Apparently these are busses e-Palette by Toyota, hydrogen fuel-cell powered. Level-4 self-driving capable, but there's a designated driver on-board. Up to 20people, range 150km, speed 19km/h.
Here's what's inside e-Palette bus:
Sorry for the confusion.
Each country could submit various robots with varioius specifications - kind of like an olympic games version of robot wars
I believe the bot ti was no longer hosted because there seems no strong monetizing channels. Even that a lot of people enjoy them.
The thing is that he is a full body cyborg ex JSDF soldier with with Ranger training that can literally bend steel bars with bare hands and jump between buildings. And for historical reasons all cyborgs in the near future cyberpunk world of GitS compete on the Paralympics, making them much more interesting than the "normal" Olympic games where only non-augmented humans presumably still compete with each other, with all the limitations of a standard human body.
Demo of the Field Support Robot (FSR) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDHK2rrH_2Y
It is not a easy project, if you hit an athlete that's a problem. They mention in tests with visually impaired long jump they had to reduce gear noise of the FSR to not interfere with the other team member.
But it could have been done 20+ years ago, there's still no way they are even close to being cost effective. And I predict they will be used sparingly in the field since they will be too buggy. This is not an iterative design, it's a show it off then put it in a cupboard design
I am actually looking forward to robot competitions, even AI Quake/StarCraft battles.
The closest thing we have right now is radio controlled battlecars banging each other. Not terribly exciting after the first few minutes