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Afterward decades of being relegated to science fiction, robotic exoskeletons have made amazing strides in just the past few years. This week, the FDA approved a lightweight robotic exoskeleton, called the Indego. While the Indego isn't the start of its kind, it punches above its weight in terms of what it tin can offer. Information technology's lighter — near twenty pounds lighter — than either of its prior-art fellows, the ReWalk or the Phoenix.

Vanderbilt professor of engineering Michael Goldfarb, who designed and built the device, meant the Indego to be easily useful to a wide range of people. I of his design goals was that the exoskeleton should give users the maximum possible caste of personal freedom. It had to be hands put on and taken off from a wheelchair. It'south got a command scheme a lot like a Segway. Users brand the exoskeleton move by leaning from the torso — lean forward and it takes a footstep, lean back for a few moments and information technology will sit downward. "You can think of our exoskeleton every bit a Segway with legs," Goldfarb even said in a statement.

Another major divergence betwixt the Indego and its competitors is that it uses a rehabilitation technology chosen functional electrical stimulation (FES), which delivers targeted electricity through the skin sort of like a TENS unit. FES itself is a well-established treatment for spinal cord injuries and other neuromuscular problems — the Christopher Reeve Foundation fifty-fifty mentions FES by name — but while this specific application of FES shows a lot of hope, it may or may not actually be therapeutically useful.

To that cease, the DOD is interested enough in Goldfarb'due south work that they threw downwardly cash to put him at the head of a four-yr study of the benefits of such exoskeletons for people with spinal cord injuries. They'll be working with the Mayo Dispensary, among others, to study the impact of exoskeletons on the lives of bodily humans, non just for military applications. The study will involve 24 participants, and it's also intended to determine whether regular apply of the Indego will help with the host of secondary medical bug that being wheelchair-bound can crusade, including only non express to pressure sores, blood clots, cardiovascular and respiratory problems, and chronic pain.

Correct at present the sticker toll is supposed to be a cool $80,000, which leaves the Indego far out of attain for most. But that story isn't over. The adjacent step, according to the original Vanderbilt press release, is to get the Indego a Medicare/Medicaid "rate lawmaking," which would percolate down to individual wellness insurers and ensure that patients could be reimbursed for up to eighty% of the toll of a given piece of medical equipment. While the Indego has been available in Europe since terminal year, Parker Hannafin, the manufacturer, notwithstanding has to demonstrate to the FDA that the device has the secondary medical benefits it claims. Assuming their success, the company plans a commercial stateside launch for Indego in the about future.