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The Cybathlon: Bionic athletes compete for the gold — and push assistive technologies forward


In the international competition, people with physical disabilities put state-of-the-art devices to the test as they race to complete the tasks of everyday life

Next week, several intrepid cyber-athletes will race to carry out routine household tasks via a computer avatar: They’ll have to open a locked door, for example, and hold a cup under an ice dispenser to collect a precise number of cubes. The FES bike race, in which pilots had to cycle 750 meters around a track, was the climax to the inaugural Cybathlon, highlighting both the grit of the competitors and the challenges of integrating machines with humans. “To the best of our knowledge, our system is the first walking robotic personal care assistant proposed for people with limited mobility,” Scheidemann, Cramariuc and Marco Hutter, the head of the RSL, wrote earlier this year.

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