At the Bionic Olympics, athletes and engineers make miracles

THE FUTURISTIC TECH AND HUMAN INGENUITY THAT’S REDEFINING WHAT IT MEANS TO BE PARALYSED..

- JOHN BRANT

THE MORNING OF the powered exoskeleton finals at the 2016 Cybathlon opened on a less-than-promising note.

Mark Daniel, a 26-year-old former welder who’d been paralysed from the waist down in a car accident at 18, was rushing down a ramp at the venue when his wheelchair caught on a post. He took a hard tumble out of his chair and on to the pavement. This alarmed his teammates, a group of six engineers and technicians from the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. They’d been working 12-hour days for months, designing, assembling, and refining the robotic exoskeleton suit for which Daniel served as the lone pilot. They had no Plan B. Given the public and media spotlight focused on the Cybathlon, careers could rise or fall depending on Daniel’s performance.

All week in Zurich, Switzerland, it had been ‘Go slow, Mark. Take it easy, Mark’. He understood the concern, but was determined to make the most of his first trip abroad. Before this, the Floridian hadn’t done much travelling beyond Tallahassee.

On their first night in town, before anybody went to bed, Daniel’s teammates had unpacked and assembled the exoskeleton – 30-plus kilograms of aluminium-alloy frame, compact DC motors, sophisticated software, and lithium-battery-powered actuators. Daniel donned the suit, and the engineers asked him to walk down the hallway to test it. Instead, he made a beeline for the elevator, rode down to the lobby, and high-stepped through the bar. The next day, in his wheelchair, Daniel rolled out to see the city.