Is this the Olympics of the future? The Cybathlon championship sees man and machine merge in a global competition between 51 teams from 20 countries.

The event pits people of differing abilities against one another as they perform everyday tasks with the help of advanced assistive technology. 

The Cybathlon events include a powered prosthetic leg race, powered exoskeleton race, functional electrical stimulation bike race and brain-computer interface race.

Due to COVID-19, the teams have to compete remotely from their home bases, rather than travelling to Zurich where the event is usually held. 

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Each team consists of researchers from universities and private companies as well as a pilot who is in charge of performing the task. 

RAZOR's Shini Somara spoke to Zurich-based team Neurolegs and their pilot Stefan Poth, who lost his leg in a motorcycle accident seven years ago. 

"It isn't a superhuman, super-athlete competition. It's a competition of daily life," Poth explains as he guides RAZOR through this futuristic new world of sporting competition.

"You have this beam where you have to balance on it using a prosthesis and your leg and you have to carry heavy things across it.

"They are quite challenging obstacles but all of the obstacles have something to do with obstacles you would encounter in your daily life."

The ordinary nature of Cybathlon events enables scientists to better understand challenges people face in daily life and how they can change their technology to create better interventions.

Poth says leg amputees like him face a specific set of daily challenges. "You always have to be aware of the floor," he says. "The control of the floor is very important for us.

"We are walking on sight and if someone has no good visual abilities then they need this visual feedback from another part."

Giacomo Valle is the lead scientist for the Neurolegs team, whose technology is an add-on to existing prosthetics and provides the user with sensory feedback.

"We understood that the lack of sensation is something that is really important, both for the upper and lower limbs," Valle explains. "In particular, for the lower limbs, people need information about the interaction of the leg with the ground in the face of obstacles and in the dark."

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