The World Cup got its start this afternoon with a particularly special kick: one from a paralyzed volunteer wearing a robotic mind-controlled exoskeleton. The ambitious kick has been a long time in the making, with a whole group of volunteers training on the exoskeleton to make sure that there would be an operator skilled enough to pull off the tricky feat. The suit was operated using an EEG headset and was worn by the 29-year-old Juliano Pinto, who is paralyzed from the waist down, according to the BBC. Though the live demonstration was successful, there was no guarantee that it would be: as the researcher behind it told us previously, the suit was being worked on pretty much up until the moment of its debut.
World Cup 2014 kicked off by paralyzed man in mind-controlled robot suit
is The Verge’s executive editor. He has covered tech, policy, and online creators for over a decade.
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