Communications of the ACM

bathlon sets a deadline and pushes for
delivery of the innovation which has
happened before,” says Knut Lechler,
Össur’s other team leader. “The Cy-
bathlon provided a platform to show
what we have in the pipeline.”
Lechler’s colleague David Langlois
noted that Cybathlon represents a
new way for commercial providers
such as Össur to market the real-
world user benefits of their technolo-
gies prior to being released or sold to
the public, rather than simply high-
lighting clinical results or technical
specifications. Says Langlois: “You
can see Cybathlon as a reversal of the
usual innovation competition frame-
work, challenging the manufacturers
and innovators to showcase their con-
tribution to the users.”
The structure of Cybathlon is also
unique in that both the pilots who con-
trol the devices and the technology it-
self are of equal importance.

“Pilots have to show that they can
complete a task that is integral to daily
life,” Riener says. “The device needs
the pilot, because it needs someone to
control the device.”
According to Riener, most of the
teams are from universities and oth-
er non-profit development groups,
though about 25% were for-profit,
commercial, or industrial groups.
However, Riener says that the types
of solutions presented by the corpo-
rate teams were generally simpler, but
more robust in nature.

“The companies want to develop technology that can be commercialized quickly, and that’s why they develop solutions that can be considered to be more practical,” Riener says.

On the other hand, many competitors at Cybathlon are academic researchers, such as NeuroCONCISE, a non-profit group that has developed wearable neurotechnology. NeuroCONCISE’s solution noninvasively measures and translates brain waves into control signals that permit people to communicate and interact with computers without moving. The group took third place in the brain-computer interface race, and team leader Damien Coyle noted the competitive angle helped motivate and reinforce the team’s belief that its work is on the right track.

“This competition was going to re-
ally test and raise the bar to see what
the technology could achieve,” Coyle
says. “It also raised awareness among
the public about the technologies that
are out there, and put us all under pres-
sure” to make sure the work they are
doing is viable.

Another team that competed at Cybathlon came from the Florida-based Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, or IHMC, which has been working on an exoskeleton using torque-controlled actuators and powered joints to help people who have been paralyzed, or who have lost a limb. The group competed and earned a silver medal in the powered exoskeleton race, in which the pilot needed to complete six tasks that are common to everyday living.

Team leader Peter Neuhaus said care was taken by the organizers to make sure the tasks would be challenging, yet not so difficult to complete as to be unreasonable. Significant attention was paid to ensuring the tasks were as closely related to real-world scenarios as possible, which meant all technology designs needed to be practically focused, rather than focused on abstract concepts or movements. Indeed, the tasks in the exoskeleton race—getting up from a sofa, walking around obstacles, walking up a ramp to open and walk through a door, walking over stepping stones, walking over an uneven floor, and walking up and down stairs—are tasks likely to be encountered on a regular basis by people with impaired mobility.

“Our research group has been in
other types of competitions before,”
Neuhaus says. “The challenge with
competitions is to ensure that the solu-
tion to the task advances the research
field. The solutions developed for Cy-
bathlon use advances that carry on be-
yond the competition, and can operate
in the real world.”
All told, the significant amount of
attention paid to Cybathlon—more
than 4,600 spectators attended in per-
son, and international media cover-
age of the event was strong—helped
raise awareness of the research be-
ing done in universities and among
for-profit companies. Participating in
Cybathlon is “something you can tell
people about,” Coyle says. “It’s quite
a unique thing, and it opened up fur-
ther avenues for where the technology
could go.”
Cybathlon is also helpful in elimi-
nating some of the silos that often oc-
cur in research and commercial devel-
opment labs.

“A competition like Cybathlon pro-
vides a great insight on what is the
current thinking about real-life chal-
lenges associated with disabilities,”
Langlois says. “Furthermore, since
there is always a lot of ways to solve
these problems and there is no book
telling you how to resolve it, a friendly
competition between innovators and
engineers is always a good way to
stimulate creative minds and drive
out technology.”
According to participants, there
aren’t any similar events being pro-
duced, either in the U.S. or around
the world, that aren’t affiliated with
Riener’s group; Cybathlon’s close ties
with researchers and corporate en-
tities involved in bionic prosthetics
and brain research likely has consoli-
dated support around the Cybathlon
brand and event. Riener says smaller
regional events that license the Cyba-
thlon name may be launched around
the world over the next four years, and
another major event is slated to take
place in Zurich again in 2020.

Interest remains high, as current assistive technology is not yet satisfactory, according to Riener. “The wheelchairs are still too bulky, and can’t go over uneven terrain,” he says. “The commercially available prosthetic devices are still not powered, which makes it very challenging to climb stairs or walk up ramps.”