Totally paralysed people will be able to take part, using a brain-computer interface
The first Cybathlon, an Olympics for bionic athletes, will take place in Switzerland in October 2016.
The event will include a race where competitors control an avatar via a brain interface.
There will also be races for competitors wearing prosthetic limbs and exo-skeletons.
Hosted by the Swiss National Competence Center of Research,
it is hoped the competition will spur interest in human
performance-enhancing technology.
More people are walking again thanks to exo-skeletons
The brain-computer interface race is designed for competitors
who are paralysed from the neck down. They will control an avatar in a
computer racing game via a headset that connects the brain to a
computer.
There will also be races for those wearing arm or leg prosthetics, an exoskeleton race and a wheelchair race.
The assistive devices worn by the athletes, who will be known
as pilots, can either be ones that are already commercially available
or prototypes from research labs.
There will be two medals for each competition, one for the pilot and one for company that developed the device.
There will also be a wheelchair race
Bionic limbs and exoskeletons are becoming much more
technically advanced, offering those wearing them much more realistic
movements.
Prof Hugh Herr, from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, showed off some of the prosthetics that his team have been
working on at the Ted (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference
in Vancouver last week.
He is currently in negotiations with health care
professionals to get the bionic limbs more widely available to those who
need them.
Pilots with arm prosthetics will be able to compete
Often though there was a disconnect between technology and
patients, said Prof Robert Riener, event organiser, from the University
of Switzerland.
"The idea is that we want to push development of assistive
technologies towards devices that patients can really use in everyday
life," he told the BBC.
"Some of the current technologies look very fancy but are a long way from being practical and user-friendly," he added.
The other main aim of the games is to allow people to compete who have never had the opportunity before.
"We allow technology that has previously been excluded from
the Paralympics. By making it a public event we want to get rid of the
borders between patients, society and the technology community," Prof
Riener said.