Exactly one year from today, the 2020 Olympic Games will begin in Tokyo, followed by the Paralympic Games a month later. While the competitors will still be human, technology will be ever-present. Toyota, the presenting partner of the torch relay, will replace some of the usual horde of volunteers with robots. There will also be cyborg versions of the Games’ official mascots, robot ushers and hawkers, and helper bots out on the field.
As tech moves us forward, the sports lineup will also be revamped: we’ll see the return of baseball and softball, which were last featured in Beijing at the 2008 Games, and we’ll see the debuts of karate, sport climbing, surfing and skateboarding at the Olympics, and badminton and Taekwondo at the Paralympics.