AES
Established Member
Afternoon all,
Unfortunately I haven't been at all active either in the shop or on this Forum lately - my usual medical problems rearing their ugly heads again.
Never mind, "every cloud ....." and all that - for example, last week on Swiss TV they showed a documentary about the work that the Swiss National Technical High School in Zurich ("ETH Zurich"), and the (I think) University of Lausanne, plus several others around the world are all currently doing with developing working prototypes of various machines to assist people with all kinds of disabilities to be able to live their daily lives more easily/with increased mobility.
Most if not all of these devices are aimed primarily at people with extreme paralysis and for example, included back pack "Exoskeletons" to allow people who can't even stand (let alone walk) to walk again; and as another example, to allow people with no leg movement at all to be able to self-pedal a tricycle by electronically triggering their own muscles to power the trike; or to assist specific brain functions with computers.
The bloke in charge of all this at ETH Zurich has links with various specialist colleagues around the world, including in Japan, Korea, and the USA, and the documentary showed him going around to these contacts promoting the idea of a "Para-Olympics" type event with 6 different contest disciplines designed to test the various prototypes (and their "pilots") against each other in specially constructed timed courses made up of "normal" day to day tasks (e.g. opening a door, climbing stairs, crossing uneven ground, sitting correctly at a dining table and then standing up again - all these to be unaided apart from the help of device they were "wearing"/using).
Well many agreed, so the event itself was held in an Ice Hockey Stadium in Zurich last Saturday (8th) and it was televised on our TV here (as far as I can see/find out from Google, only on Swiss TV unfortunately). A pity that it was only Swiss TV as in total there were 70 teams from 26 different countries taking part in the event, titled "Cybathlon".
For me it all made riveting viewing, showing not only the capability and ingenuity of the various "robots", "cyborgs" and "prosthesis machine" prototypes being used, but also very much showing the sheer grit and determination shown by so many of the competitors.
"We" (the Swiss) won a Gold medal in one of the "muscle-activated trike" events, but I was also pleased to see a really gutsy Brit winning the Silver medal in that same event.
As above, I couldn't find it any n TV station via Google other than the Swiss so I guess all you blokes back in UK won't have seen or heard anything of all this?
So the link below takes you to the Swiss TV main website page covering the event, and there are various other links to click over on the RH side of that same page covering other parts of the event, all with both still pix and video clips:
http://www.srf.ch/kultur/wissen/srf-men ... hemenwoche
Being Swiss, everything is of course either spoken in Swiss German or French, so it won't be all that informative for most of you, sorry.
But if you're interested it does give some idea of the whole thing, and the link below, from "ETH Zurich", also gives some pix and details. And on that link you can get an English translation (click on the little "EN" at the top RH side of that page).
http://www.cybathlon.ethz.ch/
Hope this is of interest to some of you - seeing this has at least made me VERY glad that my little back problems have not led to complete disability like the poor so-and-so,s you'll find in the links above.
=D>
AES
Unfortunately I haven't been at all active either in the shop or on this Forum lately - my usual medical problems rearing their ugly heads again.
Never mind, "every cloud ....." and all that - for example, last week on Swiss TV they showed a documentary about the work that the Swiss National Technical High School in Zurich ("ETH Zurich"), and the (I think) University of Lausanne, plus several others around the world are all currently doing with developing working prototypes of various machines to assist people with all kinds of disabilities to be able to live their daily lives more easily/with increased mobility.
Most if not all of these devices are aimed primarily at people with extreme paralysis and for example, included back pack "Exoskeletons" to allow people who can't even stand (let alone walk) to walk again; and as another example, to allow people with no leg movement at all to be able to self-pedal a tricycle by electronically triggering their own muscles to power the trike; or to assist specific brain functions with computers.
The bloke in charge of all this at ETH Zurich has links with various specialist colleagues around the world, including in Japan, Korea, and the USA, and the documentary showed him going around to these contacts promoting the idea of a "Para-Olympics" type event with 6 different contest disciplines designed to test the various prototypes (and their "pilots") against each other in specially constructed timed courses made up of "normal" day to day tasks (e.g. opening a door, climbing stairs, crossing uneven ground, sitting correctly at a dining table and then standing up again - all these to be unaided apart from the help of device they were "wearing"/using).
Well many agreed, so the event itself was held in an Ice Hockey Stadium in Zurich last Saturday (8th) and it was televised on our TV here (as far as I can see/find out from Google, only on Swiss TV unfortunately). A pity that it was only Swiss TV as in total there were 70 teams from 26 different countries taking part in the event, titled "Cybathlon".
For me it all made riveting viewing, showing not only the capability and ingenuity of the various "robots", "cyborgs" and "prosthesis machine" prototypes being used, but also very much showing the sheer grit and determination shown by so many of the competitors.
"We" (the Swiss) won a Gold medal in one of the "muscle-activated trike" events, but I was also pleased to see a really gutsy Brit winning the Silver medal in that same event.
As above, I couldn't find it any n TV station via Google other than the Swiss so I guess all you blokes back in UK won't have seen or heard anything of all this?
So the link below takes you to the Swiss TV main website page covering the event, and there are various other links to click over on the RH side of that same page covering other parts of the event, all with both still pix and video clips:
http://www.srf.ch/kultur/wissen/srf-men ... hemenwoche
Being Swiss, everything is of course either spoken in Swiss German or French, so it won't be all that informative for most of you, sorry.
But if you're interested it does give some idea of the whole thing, and the link below, from "ETH Zurich", also gives some pix and details. And on that link you can get an English translation (click on the little "EN" at the top RH side of that page).
http://www.cybathlon.ethz.ch/
Hope this is of interest to some of you - seeing this has at least made me VERY glad that my little back problems have not led to complete disability like the poor so-and-so,s you'll find in the links above.
=D>
AES
