Waiting for the Cybathlon
Cyborgization – the steel dreams of mankind
Olga Tabolina, XX2 CENTURY
The industry that creates artificial organs and limbs is storming new frontiers. Soon, her latest achievements will emerge from the walls of leading laboratories and companies developing robotic prostheses and will appear before the audience at a specialized competition – a Cybathlon. Where did such a need come from and what is the essence of the competition, we will try to figure it out.
ETH Zurich / SRF
Imagine the situation: you are an experienced cyclist, perhaps a cyclist. Every year you drive several thousand kilometers on your two-wheeled friend. But a nuisance happens: you are hit by a car or you fall off a cliff, or you just fall unsuccessfully – you are guaranteed injury. Maybe you'll get lucky and you'll get off with a bruise, and if there are broken bones or torn tendons? There are also more terrible injuries associated with spinal injuries – they are just as easy to get behind the wheel, at work, on the operating table. After them, a person is forced to transfer to a wheelchair and forget forever that he was once free to move.
Not so long ago it would have been a verdict. Now, even after a severe injury, it is possible for a person to regain the ability to ride a bike again. Not only modern achievements in the field of neurosurgery and neurotherapy, but also exoskeletons from the military industry and neuroprostheses developed in civilian life are at the service of the victims (although it was not without the military and space even here). And in order to demonstrate them, a Cybathlon starts on October 8, 2016 in Switzerland.
Neuroprosthetics on the march
There are quite a lot of videos on the web showing the experiments of paralyzed people on the management of neuroprostheses. In order for this to become possible at all, scientists needed to experiment for quite a long time. Over the past 15 years, good results have been achieved: a rat equipped with a neurointerface was able to push a switch with a robotic hand; monkeys were able to play video games using brain computer interfaces. Finally, a paralyzed person was able to control the neuroprosthesis by simply thinking about moving it. An impressive achievement for an industry that literally boasted before our eyes that it was able to control relatively simply encoded movements of a cockroach using an external chip.
And yet there is one difficulty: the movement of the prosthesis occurs when it is looked at. A person should fully concentrate on moving the object. This is not only physically difficult and exhausting, moving is slow. The problem is that a person does not feel the state of the object being moved, he has no feedback with it. This, together with the inconvenience of management, holds back the mass introduction of such devices. Having lost a limb, for example, an arm, a person begins to face the fact that due to the lack of sensitivity of the prosthesis, any of his actions can be associated with destruction - household items break, food spoils, – use becomes inconvenient.
To solve this problem, neuroprostheses are beginning to be made bidirectional: now a person not only gives a command to the prosthesis, but also feels what is happening to him during its execution. To do this, on the one hand, it is necessary to understand which parts of the brain "feel" what when performing various actions, and on the other – to learn to transmit "feeling signals" taken from the prosthesis performing a certain command directly to the human brain controlling it. Not the most trivial task, and researchers are trying to solve it in different ways: by stimulating the nerves of a lost (not working) limbs, by redirecting nerve impulses to another part of the body, from where it is already possible to shoot and process a signal, and finally, by direct transmission of signals to the brain. In any case, this stage has been declared by many researchers to be the most important, allowing us to approach the solution of the problem of creating a fully functional prosthesis, whose work would resemble the work of a natural limb.
The currently available prostheses are equipped with "feedback", even the simplest ones: a person can always feel pressure in the part of connecting the prosthesis to the body and thus understand, albeit indirectly, what is happening to him. For those who use motorized prostheses, the situation is even easier: by controlling the prosthesis with the help of muscle impulses, people not only feel pressure at the junction of the prosthesis and the body, but also hear changes in the motor when the prosthesis grabs something or moves. A few years ago, the developers also proposed using nerve stimulation at the junction, vibration and/or air pressure in the form of feedback.
The problem is that all this is unnatural for a person, the prosthesis is not felt by a part of the body. Therefore, the implementation of feedback is a difficult task. In essence, it is necessary not just to recreate "proprioception" – the feeling of finding a limb in space – but also to record it in the necessary areas of the brain. And if the first question is technically solvable – modern prostheses are equipped with a bunch of sensors that allow you to do this – then the second one is a problem.
For example, as it was decided at the University of Utah: the electrodes were attached to the nerves at the junction of the prosthesis, and then the nerve endings were stimulated using weak electric currents. Thus, the patient felt as if his fingers were moving or even touching something. Well, how do you feel what exactly you are touching and transferring? It is necessary to analyze the force exerted by the fingers of the prosthesis and their position in space. Then the computer analyzes it, and only then the next nerve stimulation occurs. This path was followed at the Florida International University (FIU) in Miami. Other researchers decided to abandon the standard electrodes, fearing that they would somehow damage the nerves, and instead created an electrode cuff that wraps around the nerve. Tests of a similar electrode developed at CWRU were successful.
No matter how promising the results obtained, it is necessary to take into account that developers need to stimulate hundreds of nerve endings in order to simulate the sensations experienced by a person with a normal working limb. Among other things, the prosthesis should work really long. After all, in the case when it is connected directly to the nerves, it would have to resort to surgery over and over again to replace it. To avoid these problems, other developers decided that sensory feedback should occur through the skin.
The development of this method was helped by a case. In 2002, the Bionic Medicine Center at the Chicago Institute of Rehabilitation developed a procedure for "targeted innervation" of the chest muscles for one of the patients. Instead of stimulating the nerve ending at the place of attachment of the prosthesis, it was decided to "redirect" it to the chest muscles. Thus, the patient thought about moving the prosthetic limb, but the nerves of the pectoral muscles were subjected to innervation. The experiment ended in success and, to the surprise of many, the patient was able not only to move the prosthesis, but also to feel the touch of the prosthesis to the object as if someone touched his chest. It turned out that although part of the skin nerves were innervated, the brain perceived the received impulses as a touch of the palm and fingers.
This method, with all the innovation, is not ideal, it strongly depends on each specific case (people are not exact clones of each other, the location of nerve endings is individual, the spectrum of nerve impulses is individual, so in each new case it would be necessary to adjust the neuroprosthesis to the patient), and the stimulation area is limited to a small area of skin. Nevertheless, some companies (for example, HDT Robotics) are already developing similar prostheses.
However, none of these technologies can improve the situation of paralyzed patients who have severed the neural connections between the brain and the body due to injuries or something else. Therefore, some researchers have come to the conclusion that it is necessary to directly stimulate the neurons of the part of the brain that in its natural state is responsible for the necessary limb or part of it.
It is extremely difficult to do this, because at the moment it is not quite known exactly which neurons these are. This means that there are options: identify them and simulate impulses, or teach arbitrary neurons of the brain the necessary reaction.
In the first case, the experimenters put electrodes in the monkey's brain and, for example, force it to track an object with its eyes. The information about this is recorded, analyzed, and then, the researchers try to stimulate exactly those areas / neurons in her brain that were active during the tracking of the object. According to one of the reports, already in 2012, researchers from the University of Chicago managed to practically implement this method.
The second case resembles the development of a conditioned reflex. At Duke University Medical School, monkeys, by moving a virtual limb that captured objects of different shapes on the screen, received stimulation of certain brain neurons. Low-frequency if they captured an object with a rough relief surface, and high-frequency if it was smooth. Over time, monkeys quickly learned to choose the appropriate subject depending on the frequency of impulses sent to excite neurons. Moreover, they were taught to feel the chosen objects – whether they are rough or smooth.
However, neither in the first nor in the second case was it clear what exactly the monkeys were experiencing, and how natural it was for them.
Regardless of which innervation signals are used, researchers and inventors need more precise tools. No matter how accurate, miniature and sharp the electrodes are, they stimulate absolutely all neurons located close to them. This can lead to unintended consequences when a feeling or movement that should occur in, say, the thumb suddenly occurs in the little finger or ring finger.
Therefore, some researchers went even further and began to use optogenetics, injecting proteins that are sensitive to light directly into those parts of the brain that were supposed to be stimulated. The experiment, as usually carried out on monkeys, initially taught those to perform a series of actions that would stimulate the areas of the brain into which proteins were injected, and then these areas were stimulated with the help of a light source mounted in the monkey's skull. The monkeys performed the necessary actions 90 percent of the time. However, no matter how promising this strategy is, real achievements, according to scientists, will be visible only in 10-20 years.
The naturalness of sensations
Even if such technologies work tomorrow, it is not clear how much they will be able to come close to imitating natural sensations. Some researchers believe that the path to a new "artificial naturalness" is a long one. At the same time, others insist that patients do not particularly need such an exceptional naturalness of sensations.
Many of them simply need convenient neuroprostheses. For example, patients who wear cochlear implants are already glad that they can distinguish human speech and hear something, even if they cannot understand the subtleties of the sound of musical compositions.
At the same time, the military does not spare money for improving interfaces. Within the framework of only one of the research programs of the US Department of Defense, more than $ 140 million has been spent over several years on the development of a fancy prosthesis equipped with more than a hundred sensors that should allow achieving natural sensations for the wearer of the prosthesis.
The popularity of controlled and brain-stimulating neuroprostheses is growing, but regulators, and not only in the United States, are not particularly willing to give permission for the use of such devices for medical purposes. At the same time, the process has begun and will continue to go faster, especially since the results are already impressive.
So, April 2016 brought interesting and encouraging news: a person with paralysis of all limbs was able to partially regain motor activity. Ian Burkhart from Dublin, Ohio, was implanted with a system of implants that provided a bidirectional connection between his brain and muscles. The system allowed a young man with a broken spine to resuscitate his right arm, wrist and fingers. The work led by Chad Bouton from the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research (Feinstein Institute for Medical Research) was conducted for two years.
During previous studies, it was concluded that after spinal cord injury, the human brain rebuilds its neural connections. The new work made it possible to clarify that the degree of regrouping is lower than expected. This gave hope to suggest that there were not so many changes that it was impossible to bypass the damaged areas of the spinal cord to restore movement. As we already know, such a bypass has already been performed before, in particular on monkeys. This was used to move neuroprostheses. However, for the first time with the help of such technology, a person had his own part of the body reanimated.
How was this achieved? Baton and his colleagues performed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) scan of Burkhart's brain at the moment when he imagined the movement of his hands. This made it possible to accurately determine the zone of the motor cortex and associate its individual sections with these movements. Surgically implanted chip allowed to identify a certain pattern of signals, which manifested itself only when the patient began to think and imagine a specific motor activity (in this case, hand movement). The implanted chip was connected to a computer on which all this information was recorded. The collected information was processed using machine learning algorithms, after which it was transformed into a sequence of electrical pulses that were fed to the flexible cuffs worn by Burkhart on his right arm and stimulating its muscles. Literally on the first day when they were connected, the patient was able to make movements and squeeze his palm.
The result of numerous trainings – Burkhart was able to revive the movement of individual fingers of his right hand and several movements of the arm and wrist. He learned not only to take a glass of water, but even to play a video game.
The study is inspiring, because it turns out that, despite the damage to the spine and the severing of nerve connections with the limbs, the brain has not had time to rebuild the already "tuned" areas for several years. A few years after the injury, they were responsible for the movement of the hands.
Moreover, a few years after the injury, with almost complete paralysis, Burkhart's brain managed to learn how to coordinate the actions of his reanimated hand. The longer and more he learned to control it, the better this coordination became, the more confident the movements. The machine algorithm developed by Baton took into account these changes and flexibly adapted, making the patient's movements more and more accurate.
There are also difficulties. The system is a laboratory one and requires recalibration at each start. However, this is a purely technical process, and they hope to solve it eventually.
In addition, Burkhart does not feel the objects he is manipulating. Such an opportunity could be tried to provide him, for example, with the help of skin innervation, which was written above.
However, the question still remains, what to do in case of complete paralysis, when a person cannot move a single muscle?
The cybathlon, of course, cannot answer this question. Nevertheless, by drawing attention to the problems of the disabled, to what they have to deal with every hour, the competition can contribute to a more active solution of these problems. Perhaps after some time, a broken spine, a lost limb, degenerative nervous diseases, paralysis will cease to be a stigma that makes a person considered as inferior.
The Birth of Cyborgs
Actually, it is precisely because of the connection of the human body and neuroprostheses that the term cyborgization was born, which is perfectly suitable for describing the direction in which prosthetics of human limbs is moving: direct connection with the human nervous system (primarily with the peripheral), the study of brain interfaces, the allocation of patterns (patterns) of signals of nervous activity when committing various movements, the creation of fast machine learning algorithms in order to adapt neuroprostheses to the individual characteristics of each human body.
But, despite the actively conducted research, they all had disadvantages. They were not constrained either by weight and dimensional restrictions, or by economic considerations. This has led to the fact that the cost of convenient neuroprostheses goes over the mark of several tens of thousands of dollars. This sharply limits the possibility of their mass application. The absence of mass use sets a limit on the tasks that neuroprostheses should solve. As a result, they are not just expensive, but also not quite convenient for their carriers. And "civilian" – compared to military counterparts – are also low-power. For example, functional electrical stimulation (FES), which is based on the removal of a muscular electrical pulse to control and coordinate the movement of limbs, in particular legs, in the civilian version for cyclists gives no more than 20 watts of power produced. This is only 1/10 of what a trained cyclist produces when pedaling. And yet, even these modest results open up huge opportunities for those who have been deprived of any opportunity to move for too long.
Machine learning
80 research groups from 25 countries will take part in the Cybathlon. They represent the entire spectrum of the modern industry – from small startups to the world's largest manufacturers of fancy prosthetics. They include approximately 300 scientists, researchers, engineers, support service members and, finally, participants in the competition. The latter will have to compete in six disciplines, which primarily imply the ability to perform routine actions that are so familiar to many.
Competitions among those with manual neuroprostheses will be among the first. Participants will compete, for example, in cooking. Owners of leg prostheses will have a competition to overcome stairs, etc.
The venue of the Cybathlon is the Zurich hockey Stadium for 7,600 spectators. The organizers of the competition hope to attract the same attention to the event as to the Paralympic Games, so there will be no shortage of reporters. At least, that's what they promise.
The difference is that the Paralympic Games glorify the human body of athletes, albeit crippled, who are provided with commercially available prostheses and devices. The main focus of the cybathlon is on technologies and technical innovations. Therefore, the participants of the competitions are called pilots here – by analogy with the testers of equipment – and not athletes.
Most of the cybathletes will compete using prostheses that just yesterday came out of the bowels of the laboratories. Therefore, many people hope that the devices and technologies tested in competitions will accelerate the development of new neuroprostheses, and, ultimately, this will contribute to the mass introduction of new products around the world.
The daily tasks in which pilots will compete, according to Robert Riener, an engineer in the field of biomedical technologies from the Swiss Higher Technical School of Zurich (German Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zurich), and the creator of the Cybathlon, only seem easy. One cannot disagree with him in this: many of the standard actions for us – to keep our balance on a slippery surface, quickly cut food, get dressed, brush our teeth and even go to the toilet – are the most difficult for many disabled people.
In a certain sense, we are all spoiled by the modern culture of the "superbody among superhumans", which can be found in any modern blockbuster. It is difficult to imagine that for a large number of people, every day they live is a hellish labor and feat, but it is possible. The very concept of a Cybathlon in the literal sense of the word grew out of just such heroism. In 2012, Zac Vawter, who lost his leg in a motorcycle accident, used an experimental prosthetic leg to climb to the 103rd floor of the Willis Tower (Chicago) in 45 minutes. "Yes, I can," it was clearly read in what happened, it attracted the attention of the press, and through it, the researchers. It was this event that inspired Ringer to organize a Cybathlon: why not arrange competitions open to everyone involved in the development of prostheses, where attention would be focused on technology, and not on the participant of the competition?
Riner just suggested it in his lab. Everyone liked the idea and soon had a life of its own.
At first, it was supposed to make the Cybathlon look like a Paralympic competition. For example, climbing a mountain with the help of foot or hand prostheses. However, in the future, the decision changed under the influence of closer acquaintance of the organizers with the real problems of most owners of prosthetics: the inconvenience of wearing them, problems with use and adjustment, problems with management. All this taken together led to the fact that it was decided to descend from the Olympic heaven of units to the earth of millions. After all, solving daily problems is more important than developing another cool prosthesis for a sprinter who would simply run faster than anyone else in the world. So the Cybathlon has become fundamentally non-Olympic.
Brain Power
Perhaps the strangest competition at the Cybathlon will be a test of the brain–computer interface (or simply, the brain interface), in which 15 pilots will take part. For four minutes, while they will compete, what is happening in their heads will be projected on the huge screens of the arena. The essence of the competition is as follows: each of the rivals will use his brain to control an object on the screen. The task will be to get the object to the finish line, bypassing numerous obstacles. To do this, the analysis of the brain activity patterns of participants is used, who must give the object exactly three commands: accelerate, jump over spikes, drive under laser beams.
Anything can act as patterns. For example, at the University of Essex in Colchester (England), researchers led by Ana Matran-Fernandez have come up with an algorithm that greatly simplifies this mental work for people. They linked the execution of commands with the pilot's thoughts about his arm or leg. Usually, in order to perform acceleration, jump or evasion, full concentration on the task is required. But the thoughts about their arms and legs are so simple and natural that a pilot can control an object while doing mathematical calculations in his mind. In the same way as in ordinary life, we can simultaneously think about something of our own and avoid obstacles.
The fact is that electrical signals are weak, besides they differ in every person. Therefore, in each individual case, you will have to tune in to individual characteristics (this is due to the individual development of the human brain, which makes it difficult to identify a certain "generalizing activity pattern +/- 7% for deviation). Moreover, during the competition, the pilot is distracted, hormones, for example, adrenaline, act on him, and this also changes the parameters of the signals being filmed.
A serious problem is that it is necessary to be constantly focused on some task (in this case, on management), and this greatly exhausts the participants. Therefore, one of the problems that must be solved in order to make it easier for disabled people to control their cyborg prosthesis is the prediction of the "direction of mental activity". In particular, one of the teams led by Jose del R. Millán, a specialist in the field of neuroscience from the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (fr. École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne), specializes in this.
Despite serious prospects, brain interfaces may never be massively used in prosthetics, since the detection and use of muscle activity is much easier to implement. Besides, these two directions are developing in parallel. And yet, if it is possible to create brain interfaces that are cheap and fairly accurate in terms of implementation control, they could help the paralyzed to control wheelchairs (or other means of transportation), computers or other electronic devices. Finally, they would allow, using Skype robots, to communicate, to virtually participate in this or that meeting. Actually, the very possibility of taking developments outside of the scientific laboratory means "the coming of the future", which is witnessed by viewers and participants.
Other competitions at the Cybathlon should further highlight the successes achieved in the field of more traditional prostheses. In the leg prosthesis competition, participants must overcome all kinds of steps, stones arranged in a rather chaotic order, sidewalks located at different angles, open doors, and all this by getting up first from a chair. The fact is that moving from the "sitting" position to the "walking" position is one of the most difficult tasks in terms of coordination of movements, which can be solved in different ways.
Some participants are going to use specialized "smart knees" and "smart ankles" that will recognize micro-acceleration and adjust their movement while walking, as well as in case a participant tries to fall.
And yet even the most sophisticated and inventive engineering pales in comparison with what any human body can do. For example, when we pick up an ordinary pencil, we quite naturally adjust to its size and shape. Our muscles "regulate themselves" all the necessary efforts, and the brush as a whole, and each finger individually. The peripheral nervous system works here in a kind of "background mode". A person does not concentrate on performing any mechanical action, such as "taking a plate", "extending his arm", "pressing the pedal", etc. All this is done by itself, unlike the management of any cyborgized prostheses, where you have to put considerable effort to manage them. The latter does not contribute to the popularity and mass introduction of cyborg prostheses, which means that it keeps the price for them significantly higher than the average man in the street can afford.
To solve this problem, researchers are developing specialized algorithms that should learn how to decode signals of muscle and nervous activity and predict what the wearer of the prosthesis is going to do. For example, in Barnaby (Canada), the M.A.S.S. Impact cybathlon team is located, the pilot of which is Danny Letain, a former Canadian Paralympic skier. The team has designed a specialized panel with flat buttons, which is located at the place where the prosthesis is attached to the Leteynov arm. Using the muscle memory of the hand, the pilot imagines performing one of 11 gestures, for example, "index". The muscles at the point of attachment of the prosthesis press the buttons, which tells the artificial arm what they are "going to do". It is interesting to note that the prosthesis allows you to move artificial fingers, while Lehane has not moved his "real" fingers for 35 years.
Some hand prostheses are even more advanced. At Chalmers Technical University (Sweden. Chalmers tekniska högskola) in Gothenburg, Sweden, Max Ortiz Catalan and his team have developed a prosthesis that allows them to move and experience tactile sensations simultaneously (most modern prostheses implement only one of these two functions at the same time). To implement this, the prosthetic arm is attached directly to the bone of the wearer, nine electrodes are also used to track commands transmitted to the motor of the prosthesis from the remaining muscles of the arm, as well as to transmit signals from the sensors of the fingers of the prosthesis back to the nervous network of the human body. The ability to feel objects while moving will give, according to the authors of the prosthesis, a competitive advantage to the pilot of the team, Magnus Niska.
The team from the American Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland (Ohio), led by Ronald Triolo, proceeds from a similar strategy that they hope to apply to FES (functional electrical systems) cycling races (750 meters on the track), in which people with spinal injuries compete. Most of the participants use electrical stimulation of the leg muscles using electrodes attached to the skin. However, the Cleveland system, which was developed to help people with severe lower spine injuries walk with crutches, involves the use of electrodes implanted directly into the leg muscles. They are activated by an external device on which the mode of operation of the muscles is selected, for example, "go", after which the implants generate impulses that cause the corresponding, predetermined, motor activity (the corresponding muscle groups are stimulated, their coordination is performed, the frequency of stimulation is set, etc.).
After Triolo heard about the Cybathlon, he decided to add a "cycling" mode to his prosthesis. His team is equipped with a horizontal tricycle equipped with sensors that track the angle of the rider's foot at the time when he presses the pedals, and automatically change the signals that stimulate the patterns, so that when one foot presses the pedal, the other pulls the second pedal. According to Triolo, he even had to arrange a mini-competition among those who wanted to participate in the Cybathlon. In any case, he expects only to win, and upon arrival home he plans to use the experience of the competition as a springboard for organizing similar competitions already in the USA.
Prize price
By itself, competitiveness is very far from what drives Ronald Triolo. He considers this principle little suitable, even stupid in relation to what he and his colleagues will do at the Cybathlon. "We should rather find a way of international cooperation on these issues, rather than compete with each other," he says, partly echoing Riner in this.
However, participating in a Cybathlon is an experience that should not be underestimated. Holding open competitions will contribute more to the development of the industry than scientific activity within the walls of laboratories. Moreover, open competition between firms and laboratories will lead to the exchange of ideas and to borrowing, which is difficult to expect in conditions when researchers are worried about intellectual property and compete for grants.
This opinion is supported by economist-researcher Karim R. Lakhani from Harvard Business School (HBS) in Boston, who notes that the need to compete with rivals forces researchers to finish their work faster and pay less attention to doubts about the possible economic validity of the application of their inventions. She also pushes to turn a blind eye to possible technical flaws in the future. In other words, it turns out that it is not the final product that is important, but at least a working concept or even a layout that can be demonstrated.
In confirmation of this, Lakhani gives the following example: autonomous robotic machines were developed long before today. But it was in 2005 that the American Military Agency for Advanced Scientific Research (DARPA) held a competition (with a prize fund of two million dollars) of the developments available at that time in this area, by the way – extremely imperfect. The competition attracted the attention of several leading IT firms, one of which was Google. The results of that event a decade ago can be seen in constant reports about the next breakthroughs in the field of autonomous robotic machines (including trucks). As for Google, they have already started testing robocars of their own production.
It is very likely that the Cybathlon will serve the same purpose: it will draw attention to the industry and its problems, novelties, developments. Although the competition does not have a prize fund, only medals are given out, Lakhani's research allows us to conclude that such competitions themselves can perfectly motivate participants. Perhaps the best reward for many little-known teams will be the opportunity to compete with large and top firms, Lakhani believes. In this regard, the cybathlon gives a great chance, as it attracts both those and others. For example, one of the participants will be Otto Bock HealthCare, a multibillion-dollar European company from Duderstadt, one of the world's largest manufacturers of prosthetic limbs. She will take part in three competitions, one of which will be an exoskeleton competition. In it, participants with spinal injuries will use an exoskeleton to overcome obstacles. The pilot of the company Lucia Kurs (Lucia Kurs) could not use her legs because of a spinal tumor. But, with the help of an exoskeleton, she now walks 12 km. With the help of sensors, electric motors and controllers, the mechanical ankles and knees of the exoskeleton allow you to simulate a normal human gait. It is clear that for the company this competition is a great opportunity to show what its devices are capable of, but, in addition, it is also an opportunity to look at competitors or even "dark horses" from universities. And not only to them. For example, Jesus Tamez-Duque represents a small Mexican startup INDI Ingeniería y Diseño from the city of Monterrey (Mexico). The exoskeleton of Mexicans is much cheaper than the super expensive one from the German competitor (75 thousand dollars). The moving parts of the Mexican exoskeleton are powered by motors from car doors, and most of the parts are made using 3D printing. The joystick attached to the exoskeleton allows you to choose its mode of operation – for example, to sit / sit or climb up / down the stairs.
It is interesting to note that the author of this exoskeleton hopes not only to find future employees, but also to prove that his country can be a player in this field. Although Cybathlon is considered by many as a competition between top laboratories in the field of robotics, participants like a Mexican startup bring prosthetics solutions closer to a wide consumer who simply cannot afford to pay tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars for the "best in the world" solution. If the solution is working and cheap, and most importantly mass–produced and replicated, it will only benefit the industry, forcing the leading players to reduce the price (a good example is the market of consumer electronics, computers, smartphones, tablets, cars, etc.)
In the future, they think to combine the holding of the Cybathlon with the time of the Tokyo Olympics, which will be held in 2020. In addition to the competitions already mentioned above, new ones will appear – for the visually impaired and those with other visual impairments. In addition, part of the competition will be held outside the stadium. However, the participants of the current Cybathlon are already delighted with what is happening, because for many of them it is akin to the combination of the "Iron Man" of the Marvel comics universe and James Cameron's "Avatar".
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru
07.10.2016