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Bridgestone Joins the Sports and Health Innovation Consortium to Offer Technical Support to Para-Athletes

Tokyo (November 21, 2017) – Bridgestone Corporation (Bridgestone) today announced that it participates in the Sports and Health Innovation Consortium at the Shonan Fujisawa Campus’s Keio Research Institute. One of the consortium’s research themes is to develop products and equipment fitted to the bodies and purposes of their users for such applications as sports, rehabilitation, medical treatment, and nursing care.

 

As part of this effort, Bridgestone has teamed up with JSR Corporation (JSR) to develop a new glove to be used by para-athletes competing in wheelchair athletic events. JSR uses its own materials and 3D printing technology to develop grips for such gloves, while the rubber used where the wheelchair rim and handle touch is developed by Bridgestone. From November 2017, Japan Para Athletics will be collaborating with the consortium to enhance their activities in the hope of making further contributions to para-athletes.

 

Bridgestone is an International Olympic Committee (IOC) Worldwide Olympic Partner and a Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 Gold Partner. The company supports the Olympic and Paralympic Games through business activities based on its Chase Your Dream message, which represents the desire to empower people to persevere in pursuit of their dreams. As part of these efforts, Bridgestone is focused on initiatives that support para-athletes who fight for their dreams. These initiatives include developing rubber soles for sports prosthetics, as well as leveraging the company’s tire-development and other technologies to support these athletes. Participation in this consortium is one of the ways Bridgestone offers technical support to para-athletes, and the company hopes this new academic-industrial collaboration will help expand its support.

 

About Sports and Health Innovation Consortium

The consortium’s objective is to take advantage of the opportunity offered by the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 to conduct research on “digital humanics.” Digital humanics is the science capturing the movements of the human body and expressing them digitally to develop technology in support of athletes and participants, as well as to create businesses and technologies that contribute to addressing social issues by improving quality of life through sports, medicine, nursing, nursing care, and welfare.

 

The consortium focuses on three primary research themes:

  1. Development of products and equipment fitted to the bodies and purposes of their users for such applications as sports, rehabilitation, medical treatment, and nursing care.
  2. Development of communication and broadcast service contents for such applications as sports, rehabilitation, medical treatment, and nursing care.
  3. Standardization of data distribution for the communication and broadcast services used to support the above research themes.

 

About Bridgestone Corporation:

Bridgestone Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo, is the world’s largest tire and rubber company. In addition to tires for use in a wide variety of applications, it also manufactures a broad range of diversified products, which include industrial rubber and chemical products and sporting goods. Its products are sold in over 150 nations and territories around the world.