Cybathlon organisers and advisory board comprehensively look like they lack all competence with regard to real application and successful development of real prosthetic arms for real work. Wolf Schweitzer, 2024 [link].
Interview of Roland Sigrist by Cybathlon Interviewer, December 1, 2023 [link]
Introduction: CYBATHLON events challenge and inspire teams to build assistive technologies with real-world applications that can change the lives of people with disabilities. CYBATHLON Co-Head Roland Sigrist, who is responsible for the competition, parts of the broadcasting, partnerships and more, tells us what it takes to put on CYBATHLON and how it became more inclusive.
Critical comment: Wolf Schweitzer then tells us where these explanations fall short of a future that a demanding prosthetic arm user expects of a Federal Institute of Technology.
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Cybathlon Interviewer: There must be a lot to consider when putting on a CYBATHLON event. How do you do it?
Roland Sigrist: When we design tasks for the CYBATHLON competition we have to consider many aspects. We talk to the end users and ask them: what functionality do you need so that your assistive device will function in daily life? We talk to the engineers and ask them: where can you go with the technology in the next few months or years? Can you develop new features that people with disabilities can use in daily life? We also talk with the teams that have already participated in CYBATHLON competitions. So it’s really a community that supports us in developing the new CYBATHLON tasks every four years.
Cybathlon Interviewer: Can you give us an example, and perhaps one that shows how these tasks might change from one CYBATHLON to the next?
Roland Sigrist: In 2015 at the very first CYBATHLON rehearsal we had straight edge stairs as an obstacle for the wheelchair teams. At that time only one team could solve this task.
By 2020, 90% of teams could complete the task. So we started thinking of a new challenge and came up with winding stairs. We asked the community if they thought they would be able to do this in 2024. Some said yes, some said yes, but it will be a challenge. So in the CYBATHLON 2024 wheelchair competition we will not only have the straight stairs, which many teams already can do, we will also have winding stairs, where new technology is required to solve the tasks.
Cybathlon Interviewer: What have you learned about how to put on the CYBATHLON events over the years?
Roland Sigrist: The biggest learning is that in 2020 the pandemic showed us that it cannot just be an event hosted locally. In fact, the competition can only be inclusive if people around the world can join in. So, we came up with a new idea of a multi-hub event. Teams can travel from all over the world to CYBATHLON 2024 and compete in the arena in Zurich if they wish. Those who cannot or do not want to travel or prefer to create their own hub can do so. Seeing a team in Japan doing these tasks via live link in 2020 was probably the best moment of my time working for CYBATHLON because it made me realise we could do remote events and build a more inclusive event with teams from all over the world.
Cybathlon Interviewer: How do you make sure it is a fair competition for everyone, whether in the arena in Zurich or at their own hub?
Roland Sigrist: We recruit CYBATHLON volunteer officials in each location around the world and educate them to properly judge the races. We instruct the teams how to film their own competition. Our broadcaster then brings all these feeds together and puts TV graphics on top of everything. Our self-made scoring app is used at our CYBATHLON competitions and we get the data from all the hubs to make the rankings.
Cybathlon Interviewer: The technical specifications for each task have to be exact, from the height of a step to the distance someone has to carry an object after picking it up. What can you tell us about that?
Roland Sigrist: Our race rules very clearly define how a race has to be set up. Every racetrack around the world at each hub is standardised. The hub managers have to set up the racetracks and each obstacle according to our rules. It involves a lot of precise communication but we try to make the preparation as easy as possible so teams around the world can join in.
Cybathlon Interviewer: How is assistive device and accessibility research helping to inform and shape CYBATHLON?
Roland Sigrist: We study the latest research publications in the field of assistive technologies and talk to the researchers. It also makes the competition very valuable for the researchers themselves because we ask them about the tasks we want to set up. The research community really appreciates this because they are aware of the current state-of-the-art technology that we could include.
Cybathlon Interviewer: What would you say to any teams thinking about signing up? Why should they do it?
Roland Sigrist: Any team should join CYBATHLON because it is an experience for the whole team; the end user (i.e. the pilot), the engineers, and those who do the training with the pilots to finally reach the goal of competing at CYBATHLON. To be part of the community and do this competition not only against each other but also go on the journey together with the other teams is a really exciting thing to do.
Critical comment: how does that interview align with the actual reality of prosthetic arm use?
The interview with Roland Sigrist, Co-Head of CYBATHLON, provides insight into the event’s objectives, planning, and execution, focusing on the development of assistive technologies for people with disabilities. However, serious concerns about the reality of prosthetic arm use and the limitations of the CYBATHLON in addressing these realities seem to be indirectly confirmed by the interview in several ways:
Focus on Specific Challenges Over Comprehensive Testing: The interview highlights how CYBATHLON designs tasks by consulting with hand-picked (haha) end users, engineers, and previous participants. While this approach seems inclusive, it might lead to a selection of challenges that are more aligned with academic research interests and technological feasibility than with the full spectrum of real-world tasks that real prosthetic arm users face.
Evolution of Tasks May Not Reflect Real-World Demands: Roland Sigrist mentions the evolution of tasks, like the introduction of winding stairs for wheelchair users, which shows adaptability and progression. However, the tasks do not include activities for prosthetic arm users involving heavy labor, sweating, or precise work like replacing a watch battery. This suggests that while the competition evolves, it might not fully address the practical, everyday challenges faced by prosthetic arm users.
Event Format and Inclusivity Versus Real-World Application: The interview underscores the effort to make CYBATHLON inclusive and globally accessible, especially through the introduction of multi-hub events. However, the focus on inclusivity and global participation might shift attention away from intensively testing prosthetic arms under strenuous, real-world conditions. In fact, the hubris generated by CYBATHLON can be seen as a great distractor from the fact that they have not generated or even just motivated any improvement in available products for demanding prosthetic arm users since 2016, which now means their effective impact was ZERO over 7 years of apparantly bustling activity.
Standardization of Tasks Across Locations: Sigrist mentions the standardization of racetracks and tasks at each hub worldwide. While this claims to ensure fairness in competition, it might not reflect the variability and unpredictability of real-world environments where prosthetic arms are used. A real test will be unfair and provide a new surprise task every time. No one expects the steak knife to be blunt. No one expects a job interview to be so stressful that the prosthetic arm users sweats so much that the myoelectric junk arm dies.
Discrepancy Between Research and Real-World Applicability: The interview claims CYBATHLON’s reliance on research publications and academic input for setting up tasks. The critique is that academic researchers prefer tests that are less challenging for the devices they develop, leading to a serious gap between what is tested in the competition and the harsher realities of daily use of prosthetic arms. As the academic researchers know this very well, as this has been said to them numerous times, we are not dealing with a misunderstanding or unfortunate accident, but a wilfully accepted gap, geared to create a future with more useless prosthetic arm design. Also they may not read relevant academic research publications after all, as they still employ jar lid opening as releveant task for prosthetic arms (next paragraph).
Response to Criticism and Failure: The interview does not directly address how CYBATHLON responds to criticisms or failures, like the incident with the jar lid of one Russian speaking competitor of the 2020 CYBATHLON prosthetic arm race. This lack of discussion might suggest a serious gap in addressing specific real-world challenges and the feedback from end-users and competitors as well as a lack of academic foundation of the tasks chosen. The lack of reliability for jar lid opening forces for fair testing has been published and is well known, so the CYBATHLON team can not claim they had no chance of knowing this to be an essentially unfair test – while fairness and standardization continue to be claimed.
In summary, while the CYBATHLON aims to advance assistive technology through competition and innovation, concerns about its limitations in realistically testing prosthetic arms under challenging conditions seem to be indirectly supported by the focus and methodology described in the interview. The participation in essence is extremely expensive and does not contribute a thing for real prosthetic arm users as their history and the enduring lack of technical acumen shows.
