At the Cybathlon, May the Best Brain-Computer Interface Win

Owen Collumb was paralyzed in 1993, when he was 21 years old. A tire on his motorbike blew out and he fell into a ravine, breaking a single bone in his spine. When he recovered, he couldn’t move his legs and could control only the biceps in his arms, meaning that he could lift his hands but, to put them down, he had to twist his shoulders and let gravity unbend his elbows.

He spent years in an assisted living home before petitioning to move to his own place in Dublin, with the help of home aides. Living alone was liberating; he could choose what he ate and when he woke in the morning. He began working multiple jobs for foundations and advocating for people with disabilities. One of his assistants, Sylwia Filipiek, a Polish immigrant to Ireland, had been employed at a printing factory. She had no experience with home care and struggled to help Mr. Collumb into his wheelchair at first. But, over the years, they learned how to work together, and grew close.

In the summer of 2024, Mr. Collumb and Ms. Filipiek flew to Bath, England, to train for the Cybathlon, an international competition run every four years to encourage the development of assistive technologies. The competition, hosted in Switzerland by the university ETH Zurich, consists of eight races for teams and their pilots (which is what the primary competitors, with varying disabilities, are called), each targeting different innovations, such as arm prostheses, leg prostheses and vision assistance.

Each race consists of remote tasks that are supposed to simulate everyday life for the pilots: walking across a room, picking up a grocery bag, throwing a ball. One of Cybathlon’s founders, Roland Sigrist, compared it to Formula 1. Teams are encouraged to develop prototypes toward the ultimate goal of “the independence of people with disabilities,” but the competition is straightforward and real, with all its accompaniments: nerves, heartbreak, glory. The pilots are the ones that put themselves on the line. “They’re the masters of the technology, and not the other way around,” Mr. Sigrist said.

Mr. Collumb, who is now 54, has participated in the Cybathlon since its first iteration, in 2016, as a pilot in the competition’s most abstract category: brain-computer interfaces. Imagine staring at a cursor at the center of your computer and willing it to move to the right. A brain-computer interface, which allows humans to control computers with just their minds, can turn that willing into action. As someone who lacks almost all ability to move his body, a brain-computer interface could allow Mr. Collumb to play video games, use the internet and direct his wheelchair himself.

With artificial intelligence increasing the accessibility and sophistication of technological progress, the integration of organic and robot life is now a matter of degree. How tightly should we embrace these new tools? Will they make life better in the end? Can they change our idea of what people are capable of? The Cybathlon and its participants distill these questions into something concrete. “This isn’t showing your disabilities, it’s showing what you can do,” Mr. Collumb said. “You may be in a wheelchair, you may not be able to move, but you can compete.”