World’s First Cybathlon Points to a Bright Future for Powered Prosthetic Technologies

This week the world’s first Cybathlon was held in Zurich, Switzerland, involving 66 teams representing many countries from around the world. It’s similar to the Paralympics, but instead of being purely a contest pitting athletes against each other, the Cybathlon is also a competition of technologies.

People with lower body paralysis used powered exoskeletons to get through a challenging obstacle course and those disabled from the neck down raced through a video game they controlled using brain-computer interfaces. There were also powered arm and prostheses races, bike races in which the participants’ leg muscles were activated using electric stimulators, and powered wheelchair races. We congratulate all the participants, including the athletes and their families, as well as the engineers of the technologies that helped make the races happen.

Here’s the full list of winners of Cybathlon 2016 followed by video from the competition:

Powered Arm Prosthesis Race (ARM): Robert Radocy, Team DIPO Power
Functional Electrical Stimulation Bike Race: Mark Muhn, Team Cleveland
Powered Wheelchair Race: Florian Hauser, Team HSR Enhanced
Powered Exoskeleton Race: Andre Van Rueschen, Team ReWalk
Brain-Computer Interface Race: Numa Poujouly, Team Brain Tweakers
Powered Leg Prosthesis Race: Helgi Sveinsson, Team OssurRheoKnee

Here’s a two hour video from the event, so feel free to fast forward to see the different Cybathlon events:

More video from the competition at this link (video begins at 40 seconds).

Flashbacks: Cybathlon 2016, a Competition of Smart and Powered Prosthetic Devices (VIDEO)…; Cybathlon Championship for Robot-Assisted Para-Athletes Set for 2016…