How the CYBATHLON Competition Has Advanced Assistive Technologies

Abstract

Approximately 1.1. billion people worldwide live with some form of disability, and assistive technology has the potential to increase their overall quality of life. However, the end users’ perspective and needs are often not sufficiently considered during the development of this technology, leading to frustration and nonuse of existing devices. Since its first competition in 2016, CYBATHLON has aimed to drive innovation in the field of assistive technology by motivating teams to involve end users more actively in the development process and to tailor novel devices to their actual daily-life needs. Competition tasks therefore represent unsolved daily-life challenges for people with disabilities and serve the purpose of benchmarking the latest developments from research laboratories and companies from around the world. This review describes each of the competition disciplines, their contributions to assistive technology, and remaining challenges in the user-centered development of this technology.