Olympics, Paralympics and now a CYBATHLON!
Have you heard about the Brain-Computer Interface Race (BCI) before?
They say that you are only disabled due to society disabling you. With major advances in technology, physical disability may be a thing of the past! ‘Cybathlon - Moving people and technology’
“Experience a world première on Saturday, 8 October 2016. ETH Zurich is organising the very first Cybathlon! Individuals with physical disabilities will compete side by side in six demanding disciplines, using the latest assistive technologies.
You can watch the athletes as they tackle flights of stairs in the new wheel chairs and prove their speed and skill using the most up-to-date modern prostheses. The various races test how the competitors cope with specific challenges and activities from everyday life. There are races for athletes with powered arm and leg prostheses, for those wearing a robotic exoskeleton and for powered wheelchairs. There’s also a race for cyclists using electrical muscle stimulation and even a brain-computer interface race.
Cybathlon provides a platform for the development of novel assistive technologies that are useful for daily life. Through the organisation of the Cybathlon we want to remove barriers between people with disabilities, the public and technology developers” - source
“As part of his daily training for Saturday's big race, Mark Daniel stands up from his chair, takes four or five small steps, turns around to retrace them and sits back down.
Those moves might not seem rigorous, but Daniel is paralyzed from the waist down. He gets up and down steering a 75-pound (34-kilogram) robotic exoskeleton.
Mark Daniel, who's paralyzed from the waist down, practices sitting and standing in his Mina2 robotic exoskeleton. The sofa is low, so those moves are particularly challenging.
The 26-year-old spends hours a day preparing to go for the gold at the first ever Cybathlon, in Zurich, Switzerland. There, more than 70 robot-assisted athletes from 25 countries will compete in six different events using advanced assistive devices that afford them mobility they wouldn't otherwise have.”
Source (c) cnet.com