Many people who have spinal cord injuries also have dramatic tales of disaster: a diving accident, a car crash, a construction site catastrophe. But Chloë Angus has quite a different story. She was home one evening in 2015 when her right foot started tingling and gradually lost sensation. She managed to drive herself to the hospital, but over the course of the next few days she lost all sensation and control of both legs. The doctors found a benign tumor inside her spinal cord that couldn’t be removed, and told her she’d never walk again. But Angus, a jet-setting fashion designer, isn’t the type to take such news lying—or sitting—down.
Ten years later, at the CES tech trade show in January, Angus was showing off her dancing moves in a powered exoskeleton from the Canadian company Human in Motion Robotics. “Getting back to walking is pretty cool after spinal cord injury, but getting back to dancing is a game changer,” she told a crowd on the expo floor.
The company will begin clinical trials of its XoMotion exoskeleton in late April, initially testing a version intended for rehab facilities as a stepping stone toward a personal-use exoskeleton that people like Angus can bring home. The XoMotion is only the second exoskeleton that’s self-balancing, meaning that users needn’t lean on crutches or walkers and can have their hands free for other tasks.
“The statement ‘You’ll never walk again’ is no longer true in this day and age, with the technology that we have,” says Angus.
The Origin of the XoMotion Exoskeleton
Angus, who works as Human in Motion’s director of lived experience, has been involved with the company and its technology since 2016. That’s when she met a couple of academics at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, who had a novel idea for an exoskeleton. Associate professor Siamak Arzanpour and his colleague Edward Park wanted to draw on cutting-edge robotics to build a self-balancing device.
At the time, several companies had exoskeletons available for use in rehab settings, but the technology had many limitations: Most notably, all those exoskeletons required crutches to stabilize the user’s upper body while walking. What’s more, users needed assistance to get in and out of the exoskeleton, and the devices typically couldn’t handle turns, steps, or slopes. Angus remembers trying out an exoskeleton from Ekso Bionics in 2016: “By the end of the week, I said, ‘This is fun, but we need to build a better exoskeleton.’”
Arzanpour, who’s the CEO of Human in Motion, says that his team was always drawn to the engineering challenge of making a self-balancing exoskeleton. “When we met with Chloë, we realized that what we envisioned is what the users needed,” he says. “She validated our vision.”
Arun Jayaraman, who conducts research on exoskeletons at the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab in Chicago, is working with Human in Motion on its clinical trials this spring. He says that self-balancing exoskeletons are better suited for at-home use than exoskeletons that require arm support: “Having to use assistive devices like walkers and crutches makes it difficult to transition across surfaces like level ground, ramps, curbs, or uneven surfaces.”
How Do Self-Balancing Exoskeletons Work?
Self-balancing exoskeletons use much of the same technology found in the many humanoid robots now entering the market. They have bundles of actuators at the ankle, knee, and hip joints, an array of sensors to detect both the exoskeleton’s shifting positions and the surrounding environment, and very fast processors to crunch all that sensor data and generate instructions for the device’s next moves.
While self-balancing exoskeletons are bulkier than those that require arm braces, Arzanpour says the independence they confer on their users makes the technology an obvious winner. He also notes that self-balancing models can be used by a wider range of people, including people with limited upper body strength and mobility.
When Angus wants to put on an XoMotion, she can summon it from across the room with an app and order it to sit down next to her wheelchair. She’s able to transfer herself and strap herself into the device without help, and then uses a simple joystick that’s wired to the exoskeleton to control its motion. She notes that the exoskeleton could work with a variety of different control mechanisms, but a wired connection is deemed the safest: “That way, there’s no Wi-Fi signal to drop,” she says. When she puts the device into the “dance mode” that the engineers created for her, she can drop the controller and rely on the exoskeleton’s sensors to pick up on the subtle shifts of her torso and translate them into leg movements.
What Are the Challenges for Home-Use Exoskeletons?
The XoMotion isn’t the first exoskeleton to offer hands-free use. That honor goes to the French company Wandercraft, which already has regulatory approval for its rehab model in Europe and the United States and is now beginning clinical trials for an at-home model. But Arzanpour says the XoMotion offers several technical advances over Wandercraft’s device, including a precise alignment of the robotic joints and the user’s biological joints to ensure that undue stress isn’t put on the body, as well as torque sensors in the actuators to gather more accurate data about the machine’s movements.
Getting approval for a home-use model is a challenge for any exoskeleton company, says Saikat Pal, an associate professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology who’s involved in Wandercraft’s clinical trials. “For any device that’s going to be used at home, the parameters will be different from a clinic,” says Pal. “Every home looks different and has different clearances. The engineering problem is several times more complex when you move the device home.”
Angus says she has faith that Human in Motion’s engineers will solve the problems within a couple of years, enabling her to take an XoMotion home with her. And she can’t wait. “You know how it feels to fly 14 hours in coach? You want to stretch so bad. Now imagine living in that airplane seat for the rest of your life,” she says. “When I get into the exoskeleton, it only takes a few minutes for my back to lengthen out.” She imagines putting on the XoMotion in the morning, doing some stretches, and making her husband breakfast. With maybe just a few dance breaks.
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