Exoskeleton Walker Allows Children To Take Their First Steps After Doctors Said They Couldn’t

Exoskeleton Walker Allows Children To Take Their First Steps After Doctors Said They Couldn’t

At a Canadian wellness center, a unique robotic exoskeleton is allowing children with developmental disorders to walk—often for the first time.

The nonprofit’s Regina location is eager to get families to come by and try it out. It can be used to correct a child’s gait or help them take their first steps, and is suitable for a variety of conditions including spinal cord injuries and cerebral palsy.

First Steps Wellness Center received the Trexo exoskeleton out of the goodness of someone’s heart. The $100,000 machine was donated to help children like Leo, a boy born with a rare genetic disease which left him a prognosis that walking would be forever out of reach.

But latched into the Trexo walker at First Steps, his mother Anna Begelfer has watched her son learn to walk and develop a musculature that has him able to take steps on his own, something she was told would be impossible.

“He can walk. He can be part of [sic] like everybody else; walk like other kids,” she told CBC News. “I have butterflies, I’m like, I can’t believe.”

Strapped into the walking machine, sensors at the hip and knees detect how the child is moving its lower trunk and legs, then send commands to motors that move the exoskeleton in order to assist their steps or complete them entirely. Unlike other walking devices, Trexo allows the child’s feet to touch the ground, which First Step’s Andy Schmidt says makes a big difference.

“It’s better for the bones, it’s better for feedback for the child. I mean Imagine if you or I were wandering around on clouds of air, what would that feel like? It wouldn’t give much feedback,” he said.

Like many of the world’s best inventions, Trexo Robotics was born out of personal experience. Manmeet Maggu and Rahul Udasi, two friends who were attending the University of Waterloo were distraught when they learned Maggu’s nephew in India was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, a disease that affects some 500,000 American children.

Looking into what that would mean for the child, the pair learned that he would have to spend most of his life in a wheelchair, and suffer the health complications resulting from so much sitting. Imagining that an exoskeleton could help, they quickly learned there was no such device available on the market.

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It was years of prototyping designs, 3D printing components, and asking Udasi for help before Maggu flew to India to try it out on his nephew.

“The first time we tried it it didn’t work,” Maggu told Tech Crunch. “But my brother has a factory in India in Delhi, so we made some more modifications and tried it out again and I watched my nephew try to walk with the device for the first time.”

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There are currently 6 Trexo exoskeletons sold and in use today, which was possible by marketing it as an exercise and therapy device. It allowed Maggu to circumvent some major delays in jumping through FDA regulatory hoops but also meant that it couldn’t be covered by any insurance policies, so it’s currently available for lease or rent to help families absorb its cost.

The bottom line is that even though it comes at a price similar to a new car, young Leo wasn’t ever supposed to be able to walk, but with the help of Trexo, he can—a miracle—and you can’t put a price on a miracle.

WATCH Leo go in the video below…