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Bionic Olympics to be Hosted in 2016

posted by LaminatorX on Thursday March 27 2014, @01:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the We-have-the-technology. dept.

dotdotdot writes:

The Swiss National Competence Center of Research will host the first Cybathlon in Switzerland in October 2016. This 'Olympics for bionic athletes' will include races where competitors who are paralysed from the neck down control an avatar via a brain interface. There will also be races for those wearing arm or leg prosthetics, an exoskeleton race and a wheelchair race.

There will be two medals for each competition, one for the pilot and one for company that developed the device.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by n1 on Thursday March 27 2014, @01:26PM

    by n1 (993) on Thursday March 27 2014, @01:26PM (#22129)

    I'm not a fan of the Olympics in general, but I like the idea this kind of thing could open it up to a 'performance enhanced' Olympics. The banning of legal drugs in sports has a purpose, but it's not always relevant.

    Sports can be extremely damaging or even deadly if you're on performance enhancing substances or not. I would like to see athletes competing in a less regulated field. If we can take another second ff the 100m with the use of currently banned drugs, why shouldn't we? We use drugs to extend our lives beyond what is 'natural', why not use them improve our performance in sports?

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  • (Score: 1) by song-of-the-pogo on Thursday March 27 2014, @03:24PM

    by song-of-the-pogo (1315) on Thursday March 27 2014, @03:24PM (#22186) Homepage

    I came here to say essentially what you said. A performance enhanced Olympics, as you put it, would be fascinating to see. What potentially useful ways of maximizing human physical potential might come out of such a thing? On the flip side, I imagine we would soon see how spectacularly wrong things could go.

    --
    "We have met the enemy and he is us."