Unipd at Cybathlon: Silver and Bronze for Unipd at the World Championship of Neurorobotics

28.10.2024

In the 2024 edition of Cybathlon, the first world championship of neurorobotics organized by ETH Zurich, which took place last weekend, the neurorobotics teams from the Department of Information Engineering (DEI) at the University of Padua secured two podium finishes.

Cybathlon is an international competition organized every four years by ETH Zurich with the aim of promoting the development of assistive technologies for people with disabilities. During the event, numerous teams from around the world competed in various disciplines; this year, 76 teams from over 20 countries competed in 8 disciplines closely related to assistive technologies and human-robot interaction.

The WHi Team from the University of Padua (Instagram: whi_team) competed this year at the Swiss Arena in Zurich, participating in the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) Race with two neurorobotics teams: the WHi Team and the WHi Students Team, the latter being a parallel team composed entirely of master's students in Bioengineering from DEI.

The team led by pilot Francesco Bettella, a Paralympic swimming champion, silver and bronze medalist in Paris 2024, and a PhD student at the PNC of the University of Padua, won the silver medal. Meanwhile, the WHi Students Team, with pilot Filippo Boldrin, a Statistics student, earned the bronze medal.
"A big success for the Neurorobotics group of the Department of Information Engineering at the University of Padua at Cybathlon," comments Luca Tonin, professor and head of the Padua neurorobotics group. "The two Italian teams, the WHi Team and the WHi Students Team, have won silver and bronze medals in the brain-computer interface discipline. The first place was obtained by the team from the University of Pittsburgh, which uses invasive technology with electrodes implanted in the pilot's cerebral cortex through a surgical operation. The students of the WHi Students Team also won the Jury Award for the innovation and usability of the brain-computer interface system they brought to Cybathlon. This result highlights the excellent level of research carried out by the University of Padua and the commitment to involving student groups in cutting-edge projects with profound social impact. Moreover, it places the university's neurorobotics group among the main global players in the field of non-invasive brain-computer interfaces."