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Smart assistant Robin helped the blind complete an obstacle course at a competition in Siberia

On 16-17 September, Novosibirsk hosted the Invatrophy Festival, an inclusive sports competition and conference for developers of technical rehabilitation equipment. For the first time, the festival organiser, Cybathletics Union, presented the event in a new format: teams consisting of participants with different nosologies competed outdoors in a forest landscape. 

12 teams from the Siberian and Far Eastern Federal Districts had to complete tests that simulated modern living conditions for people with disabilities. The participants were assisted by technical rehabilitation equipment. One of these tools was our smart assistant Robin.

The blind pilots, with the help of the Robin device, completed two tasks: a slalom between chairs and searching for groceries in a shop. For the first task, the participants navigated the obstacle course thanks to a built-in vibration rangefinder, which notified the pilots how close the chairs were. The second task was modelled after the daily challenges of the visually impaired: with Robin’s help, the participants had to find the products chosen at random by the team captain and put them into the food basket. The pilots from Irkutsk and Novosibirsk excelled at this task, completing it in just over 1 minute. As part of the event, Sensor-Tech Laboratory specialists also gave a presentation on artificial vision and presented our Robin, SMW Patch and ELVIS V projects at a conference of rehabilitation equipment developers. 

The festival was held by the Union of Rehabilitation Equipment Developers and Suppliers Cybathletics with the support of the Presidential Grants Fund, Novosibirsk Oblast Government and Novosibirsk City Hall. We thank our partners Cybathletics Union for organising the festival and inviting us to attend!