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commercially made exoskeleton he’d used for years; Daniel

had trained on the IHMC device for just eight weeks.

Organized and hosted by ETH Zürich, an elite Swiss sci-

ence and technology university, the Cybathlon showcases

individuals with significant physical disabilities competing

in races that simulate everyday tasks. It shines a spotlight

on the high-tech prosthetic devices designed by the world’s

leading research groups that enable them to compete.

Each event presents a fascinating dance between human

and machine: the energy of the cyclists blasting around the

track in the functional electrical stimulation event; the

intricate play of contestants buttering slices of bread in the

powered arm prosthesis competition; the bull-rush charge

of the powered wheelchair race.

But the powered exoskeleton race, a combined athletic

and engineering spectacle in which people who are para-

lyzed are empowered to walk, recalls the Biblical miracle at

the pool of Bethesda. Strapped into his suit, Daniel stood for

what was arguably the Cybathlon’s marquee event.

He clicked the button on the control panel of his right

crutch, which sent a walk command through the software

in the computer in his exoskeleton’s backpack to motors

housed in the actuators encasing his leg joints. Daniel

stepped to the starting line. He knew that he carried a f lag

not just for his teammates, but for a burgeoning community

of the disabled: In the U.S. alone, an estimated 291,000 peo-

ple are living with spinal-cord injuries. Instead of causing

him to freeze up, the pressure broke something open.

“Suddenly, I felt crystal-clear inside my head,” he says.

“The stands, the fans hollering, the guy in the exo next to

me—I didn’t see or hear any of that. I was in a bubble. All I

saw was the lane in front of me.”

t’s November 2019, and engineers at the IHMC

robotics lab in Pensacola, Florida, are gearing up

for their second shot at the powered exoskeleton

race when the Cybathlon returns to Zurich in Sep-

tember 2020 (like the Olympics, it’s held every four years).

Their new, upgraded exoskeleton (dubbed “Quix”) is

beginning to come together. At the daily 9:30 a.m. staff

meeting, Cybathlon team leader and senior scientist Peter

Neuhaus has his game face on.

A video of the exo race at Cybathlon 2016 plays in a

loop on the lab’s overhead monitors. It shows Mark Daniel

maneuvering the suit gingerly as he ascends and descends a

ramp, opens and closes a door, and negotiates a slalom line.

Daniel will return as the team’s pilot at Cybathlon 2020.

Serving as a template for the 2020 exoskeleton, the

suit Daniel wore at the 2016 event sits in the middle of the

lab, perched jauntily on an IKEA sofa. With its 6-foot-tall

humanoid shape, articulated hip, knee, and ankle joints,

and mechanical “feet” set f lush on the f loor, the device looks

like it’s about to stand and walk on its own, a feat that, with

a few tweaks, lies well within its power. Lead software and

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
paralyzed 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
onto the pavement. This alarmed his teammates, a group of
six engineers and technicians from the Florida Institute for
Human & 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 spot-
light 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
Daniel was determined to make the most of his first trip
abroad. Before this, the Floridian hadn’t done much travel-
ing beyond Tallahassee.
On their first night in town, before anybody went to
bed, Daniel’s teammates had unpacked and assembled the
exoskeleton—70-plus pounds of aluminum-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.
Now, after the tumble at the venue, team members f lut-
tered around him nervously, but he was fine, he was okay,
and now it was time. Daniel was in the arena, lining up for
the final. The six-challenge, 40-meter-long courses were
laid out in adjacent paths, allowing spectators to follow the
action. His opponent was a man from Germany piloting a

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32 May/June 2020