Following the success of the London Paralympic Games, great excitement and anticipation surrounds the upcoming Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games in Japan. One reason given for the burgeoning profile of the Paralympics and Parasports in recent years is the technological advancements in the cutting-edge prosthetics and running blades used by para-athletes.

Xiborg is a Japan-based start-up company specializing in prosthetic limbs for runners. It is currently developing new high-performance artificial limbs in consultation with world-class athletes participating in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.

In this talk, Xiborg CEO Endo Ken discusses not only Xiborg’s ambitions for Tokyo 2020, but also Xiborg’s wider vision to build a future society in which all amputees, not only professional athletes, will be able to enjoy running on an everyday basis. Towards achieving this goal, Xiborg have been developing various initiatives to make prostheses more accessible and inexpensive. These include a Blade Library, which lets people try out prosthetic limbs for sports for a small fee; support for prosthetics use in developing countries; and the holding of events aiming to increase the visibility of Parasports such as the Shibuya City Games.

This event is held in partnership with the Embassy of Japan in the UK.

About the speaker
Endo Ken is an associate researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc. (Sony CSL), and CEO of Xiborg Co., Ltd. He received his PhD as a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab's Biomechatronics group. At Sony CSL, he works on technology that rehabilitates and augments human physical capability, such as prostheses and orthoses. His team is now developing an athletic prosthesis with the goal of it being used to win a gold medal in the 100m or 200m sprint at the Tokyo Paralympic Games in 2020. He has been named in MIT Technology Review's annual list of 35 innovators under 35 (TR35). He was chosen as a Young Global Leader 2014 by the World Economic Forum.

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