Competition

Overcoming daily challenges with assistive technology

With the aim of driving forward the development of assistive technologies for people with disabilities, CYBATHLON continues to challenge the teams of developers and end-users with adapted and new CYBATHLON disciplines.

In CYBATHLON competitions, teams from all over the world compete with and against each other in eight different disciplines. Teams consist of a technology developer and a participant with a disability, referred to as a pilot. The tasks in the respective disciplines represent everyday activities.

While the competition tasks for CYBATHLON 2016 and 2020 were specified to a very high degree, tasks for CYBATHLON 2024 will include more uncertainty and variability in most disciplines. This will require improved dynamic control, increased functional flexibility of the devices and more ad-hoc selection of the problem-solving strategy by the pilots. The aim of adding variability to the competition tasks is to better account for everyday situations where the exact circumstances of a given task are not always known and/or constant over time and across different locations.

To participate in CYBATHLON competitions, pilots and the assistive devices used must meet specific eligibility criteria. Among other things, pilots must be at least 18 years old and meet the discipline-specific pilot eligibility criteria, and the assistive devices must be safe for the users and their surroundings at all times.