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Robotic Exoskeleton Releases Man From Wheelchair
Take a look at this short video of a wheelchair-bound man walking for the first time in two years with the help of a robotic suit.
(Paralyzed man walks - finally)
The footage, captured at the PhysioFunction centre in Northamptonshire, UK, shows Simon Kindleysides - an FND (Functional Neurological Disorder) sufferer - taking his first few tentative steps using the 'Rex' robotic suit.Kindleysides can be seen using the suit, which is described on the manufacturer's website as 'the world's first hands-free, self-supporting, independently controlled robotic walking device'.
Writing online about the experience, Kindleysides said: 'My name is Simon Kindleysides, I'm 31 and from Norfolk. 'I have been in a wheelchair since April 2013 when I was diagnosed with FND (Functional Neurological Disorder) which basically means I have lost all feeling and movement from the waist down.
'Thanks to them I was able to feel 6ft tall again! It was an amazing experience, one I would recommend to anyone in a wheelchair!'
Exoskeletons - just science fiction? Not anymore. But here's an excerpt from Fritz Leiber's 1968 novel A Specter is Haunting Texas:
This truly magnificent, romantically handsome, rather lean man was standing on two corrugated-soled titanium footplates. From the outer edge of each rose a narrow titanium T-beam that followed the line of his leg, with a joint (locked now) at the knee, up to another joint with a titanium pelvic girdle and shallow belly support. From the back of this girdle a T-spine rose to support a shoulder yoke and rib cage, all of the same metal. The rib cage was artistically slotted to save weight, so that curving strips followed the line of each of his very prominent ribs.
(Read more about Leiber's titanium exoskeleton
Via Daily Mail.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 7/11/2015)
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