The Superhuman Sports Design Challenge is an international symposium celebrating the next generation of inventors. It is run by the International Superhuman Sports Society.
Superhuman Sports aims to create a field where people can compete overcoming limitations with technology. The focus is on improving cognitive and physical functions of the human body, creating artificial senses and reflexes to participate in sports competitions: creating and exploring new experiences with these novel senses and reflexes by augmenting old sports, designing new sports, enhancing the training, and sharing with the audience locally and remotely.
The symposium focuses on designing and inventing novel superhuman sports or augmenting existing sport games. Superhuman Sports are activities that
rely on technology for human augmentation to enhance a human ability,
involve physical fitness and skills and
are played for fun, competition or health reasons.
The focus of the symposium is on demonstrating superhuman sports that enhance human capabilities, augment senses and merge realities. Participants are to design a superhuman sport that requires physical exertion and skills. The superhuman sport needs to require some sort of social interaction. For that purpose, an individual or team competes against another for entertainment/fun or for improving overall health. The competition can be in real-time or delayed. The superhuman sport needs to use mixed reality, i.e. somewhere on the spectrum between augmented or virtual reality, equipment. The equipment can be wearable or on the sports field.
There will be a professional panel of Superhuman Sports Society Members and Designers to evaluate each demonstrated superhuman sport. In addition there will be an audience price comprised by voting of players and spectators. Demonstrated superhuman sports will be evaluated in terms of:
Human augmentation: How and how much does the superhuman sport augment human senses and capabilities?
Fitness and skills: In how far does the superhuman sport require or train physical fitness and skills?
Fun and engagement: How much fun and how engaging is it for participants to play?
Innovation: How innovative is the superhuman sport?
Audience: How much fun is it for the audience to watch the superhuman sport?
Inclusiveness: Can participants with different background practice the superhuman sport?
Time limit is 30 minutes for one round. During this time, all aspects of the superhuman sport need to be presented. The rules should be simple enough that it can be explained in 5-10 minutes to people with diverse background.
The superhuman sports needs to be able to be played indoors. The symposium will take place in the auditorium of the Delft University of Technology. This will provide ample access to technology as well as ample space for the public to attend the symposium and the demonstrations of the new superhuman sports. The superhuman sports need to be demonstrated in the area indicated by the red square in the floor plan. The area in front of the podium in the square has a size of 16m by 14m. However, at the end towards the auditorium it is only 12m wide. The ceiling in the auditorium starts at 7m. When designing your superhuman sports, please keep these constraints in mind.
In order to plan the event, we ask you to register until June 20, 2018. Please, note that the whole event will be free of a registration fee. The organisation and catering is sponsored by the TU Delft Sports Engineering Institute (http://sportsengineering.tudelft.nl) and the social event by the Delft Research Initiative Health (https://www.tudelft.nl/en/health/).
The Superhuman Sports Design Challenge starts on Monday with a practise day so that each group can test and check the location for the demonstrations. The Monday events are only open to contributors to the symposium.
On Tuesday, the symposium is officially opened. After a keynote, each accepted superhuman sport is presented in a 15 minute presentation followed by up to 5 minutes of discussion. After the presentations, the social event takes place in the Science Centre and Botanical Garden of the Delft University of Technology. While the presentations are open to all registered participants, the social event starting from 15:30 onwards is open only to contributors to the symposium.
On Wednesday, the superhuman sports are presented in a single track and after each other. Each demonstration will last 30 minutes. The exact order of the demonstrations is defined during the practise day. Also to possible check for parallel demonstrations of superhuman sports. The demonstrations are open to the general public. The day finishes with the closing of the symposium and the announcement of the winning superhuman sport.
The Superhuman Sports Design Challenge in Delft is the first international symposium on superhuman sports. It will take place in Delft, Netherlands from July 2-4, 2018. The goal is to from then on have a from then on a yearly challenge international symposium on superhuman sports towards 2020 in Tokyo, Japan during the Olympic Summer Games.
Stephan Lukosch, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Kai Kunze, Keio University, Japan
Doris Aschenbrenner, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Susanne Boll, University Oldenburg, Germany
Hendrik Engelbrecht, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Dirk Heylen, University of Twente, Netherlands
Masahiko Inami, University of Tokyo, Japan
Isabelle Kniestedt, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Yuichi Kurita, Hiroshima University, Japan
Florian "Floyd" Mueller, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
Albrecht Schmidt, LMU Munich, Germany
Ian Williams, Birmingham City University, UK
Feel free to email us (Stephan Lukosch and Kai Kunze) regarding issues and to provide some feedback.
