BFH entering three teams in the Cybathlon 2024

17.03.2023 Three teams from Bern University of Applied Sciences BFH will be competing in the Cybathlon in October 2024. At this international contest, people with physical disabilities compete to tackle a series of everyday-related tasks, supported by state-of-the-art assistive technological systems. One of the teams will already be testing its system in competition mode at the Cybathlon Challenges on 29 March 2023.

Bern University of Applied Sciences BFH will be competing in three disciplines at the Cybathlon in October 2024. The BFH-CybaTrike team will be taking part for the third time in the discipline “Functional Electrical Stimulation Bike Race”. Team leader Kenneth Hunt is also head of the Rehabilitation Technology Laboratory (rehaLab), which opened in Biel in summer 2022. For the BFH-Hand-X team, led by Gerhard Kuert, it will be their second time competing in the discipline “Arm Prosthesis Race”. In the newly created discipline “Assistance Robot Race”, the interdisciplinary BFH-FAIR team led by Gabriel Gruener, head of the Robotics Lab, will take part in the Cybathlon for the first time in 2024. Researchers and students from the BFH School of Health Professions are also involved in the team.

Cybathlon Challenges in March 2023

The three teams’ preparations are already in full swing with about 18 months to go to the competition: the pilots are being trained to use the assistance systems, while the researchers continue to develop these systems and improve them based on user feedback. For BFH-FAIR, things will get serious for the first time on 29 March 2023 at 1.00 pm: at the Cybathlon Challenges, the team members will have the opportunity to test their development by completing two tasks in a competitive situation. A livestream will allow spectators to follow the challenges.

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What is the Cybathlon?
The Cybathlon is a non-profit project of ETH Zurich that challenges teams of developers from universities, companies and NGOs from all over the world to develop assistive technologies suitable for everyday use with and for people with disabilities. In all, there are eight disciplines. The races are designed to reflect activities encountered in everyday life. This is done to show how well the various technologies are suited to assisting people in their everyday lives. cybathlon.ethz.ch/en

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