A new exhibition of gadgets that could revolutionise the future of Paralympic sports has been unveiled, with a mind-controlled bobsleigh and a new sport called canonball among the entries.
As part of the build-up to this summer’s Paralympics in London, engineering students at Imperial College designed and built new types of sporting equipment for people with disabilities.
One of the entries, “Brainsled”, claims to allow able-bodied and disabled athletes to control a bobsleigh via a helmet device containing electrodes which enables users to “think” left or right.
The electronic signals from the electrodes are fed into the bobsleigh’s rudder.
Another entry, “Rainbow Touch,” is a fabric technology that could help improve sports for the visually impaired who cannot discern colours of team kit that denotes who is on whose team. Designers hope the translation from colour to texture will help teammates recognise each other more easily.
An entirely new sport, “Canonball”, is pitching to be the only Olympic sport played by severely disabled athletes; those with high spinal chord injuries or multiple amputees.
Other examples include a prototype technology for involving spectators more in the game of “Goal Ball” – a Paralympic sport involving blind folded teams competing against one another to hit a ball into a goal at either end of the court.
Currently, spectators have to remain silent to enable players to locate a ball, which has a bell inside it.
Engineering students developed sensors that can be worn by players, wirelessly transmitting their vital signs such as heart beat and breathing to audio devices, which are worn by spectators to take them closer to the action on the court.
A chest strap the vibrates when a blind runner strays off the track or too close to a competitor, and a device that enables the user to move, aim and fire a gun mechanism, using just head and mouth movements complete the entries.
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Professor Peter Childs, from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College, said: “This exhibition represents the past, present and future of IDE research and development.
“We are extremely proud of our current students, who have developed some great technologies that may help to make sports more inclusive for spectators and people living with disabilities.”
The exhibition, which is in the Main Entrance of Imperial College, is open to the public and runs from 5-9 March.