Written By: Nirmalya Dutta | Published : March 28, 2014 5:50 PM IST
This is the stuff geek dreams are made of, things we see only in sci-movies. Zurich is going to host the world's first Cybathlon, a sporting competition for bionic athletes. Of course, the world's most well-known bionic athlete Oscar Pistorius might not be making an appearance as he deals with the little legal pickle he's in, after allegedly shooting his girlfriend. The interesting thing about Cybathlon 2016 is that while current parathletic events allow athletes to use prosthetics to get to the same sporting capacity as able-bodied participants, the Cybathlon will actively encourage the use and development of pioneering robotic technology. Prizes will be awarded to both the winning athletes in each event and to the company behind the software or technological device used.
Organized on behalf of the Swiss National Competence Center of Research in Robotics (NCCR Robotics), the competition is open to technology already available on the market, or to research development projects by laboratories.
Six separate events will be open to athletes -- a BCI (Brain Computer Interface) race, an FES (Functional Electrical Stimulation) bike race, a leg prosthetics race, a powered exoskeleton race, a powered wheelchair race and an arm prosthetics race. 'The rules of the competition are made in such way that the novel technology will give the pilot an advantage over a pilot that would use a comparable but less advanced or conventional assistive technology,' explains the event's website.
'There will be as few technical constraints as possible, in order to encourage the device providers to develop novel and powerful solutions.' Cybathlon will run from October 8, 2016.
'The rules of the competition are made in such way that the novel technology will give the pilot an advantage over a pilot that would use a comparable but less advanced or conventional assistive technology,' it says on the Cybathlon website. 'There will be as few technical constraints as possible, in order to encourage the device providers to develop novel and powerful solutions.'
What is bionics?
The term bionic was coined by Jack E Stele in 1958 bion (unit of life) and was extremely popular in hte 70s thanks to the television series The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman and feature humans who get superhuman powers through electrochemical implants. Essentially, it's the science of constructing artificial systems which can replace living systems and is in a way similar to cybernetics. It's amazing just how much of the body can be replaced by bionic parts and prosthetics. Read more here about the newage bionic man...
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