ETH President Joël Mesot is especially pleased that the event is already bringing together researchers and people with physical disabilities from all over the world: “One of ETH Zurich’s key objectives is to convert new findings and technologies into solutions that society can really use. The Cybathlon proves that breaking new ground pays off.” To ramp up the level of global exchange, ETH – together with other international academic institutions – is organising the
Cybathlon Series
to be held between the two Cybathlons. These races each revolve around a separate discipline, giving the teams the opportunity to test out the courses under competitive conditions. The Cybathlon Series will take place in Kawasaki (Japan), Karlsruhe (Germany) and Graz (Austria) from the beginning of May.
Refined tasks
The high level of interest generated by the inaugural event means that the next competition will take place over two days on the weekend of 2/3 May 2020. The first day will consist of the qualification races, while the finals will take place on the second day. It is not just the organisational aspects of the event that have changed; the programme itself has been overhauled, too. “Our aim is to support technologies that are suitable for daily use and that people will actually want to use. That’s why it is essential that people with disabilities and developers are in constant dialogue,” states Roland Sigrist, executive director of Cybathlon.
For the arm prosthesis course, for example, the organisers have now included a challenge where the pilots have to slip a jacket on – even the most sophisticated prosthesis in the world wouldn’t be suitable for daily use if it was too large for the user to easily put on or take off a jacket. The arm prosthesis discipline will also include a new task where the pilots have to feel various objects. The aim is to promote the development of prostheses that provide sensory feedback. A new challenge for pilots in the leg prosthesis discipline is to balance additional objects on a tray while walking up a set of stairs. The idea here is to prevent participants from resting their weight on their natural leg – as was observed in a few cases during Cybathlon 2016. This will hopefully motivate designers to create leg prostheses that allow the wearer to adopt as symmetrical a gait as possible.
