Team MIRAGE91 at the Cybathlon 2024: Read the exciting new blog post on bci.plus
by Dr. Alex Kreilinger
Technical Product Manager (Brain Products)
We are always happy to support our customers if they have exciting ideas for research projects or events. One such exciting event is the Cybathlon. Held for the first time in 2016, it has already become a well-established recurring event. It brings together researchers, students, companies, and end-users of assistive technologies from all over the world, as well as interested spectators, both on site and online, to experience thrilling race competitions. Competitions are held in various disciplines: arm prosthesis, assistance robot, vision assistance, exoskeleton, functional electrical stimulation (FES), leg prosthesis, wheelchair, and brain-computer interface (BCI).
Back in 2014, when the first Cybathlon edition was announced, one of our esteemed customers, the group at the Graz-BCI lab in Austria, founded a team called MIRAGE91 (Mental Imagery RAcing Graz Established ’91). Their goal was to join forces to develop an efficient BCI, train the BCI with an end-user—in this case rather: a pilot—and support the pilot during the BCI race at the Cybathlon.
We at Brain Products were happy to support the team during the Cybathlon 2024 by lending them equipment, i.e., a LiveAmp system including electrodes and caps, and by rooting for the MIRAGE91 team during the competition.
©MIRAGE91
Compared to the events in 2016 and 2020, the challenges at the Cybathlon 2024 increased significantly: this year’s race required the pilots to perform four continuous and two discrete control signals. Anyone familiar with BCIs will understand that this is no small feat.
That said, we think MIRAGE91 and pilot Antonio did a fantastic job and we are proud to host their report on our bci.plus blog. Read the exciting summary directly from one of the team members, Shayan Jalilpourroudkoli, a graduate student at the Institute of Neural Engineering, Graz University of Technology (Austria). Discover first-hand how BCI technology was successfully demonstrated at the Cybathlon 2024, learn more about the challenges MIRAGE91 overcame, and how the LiveAmp played a crucial role.