In 2012, Kevin Piette shattered two lower-back vertebrae in a motorcycle crash near Paris. With a splinter of bone severing his spinal nerve, doctors told him that he would never walk again. A gentle, soft-spoken man, Piette didn’t believe them. He still doesn’t.
He told me this not long after I saw him walk again.
Piette’s spine remains damaged beyond medicine’s current ability to fix it. Yet there he was taking steps using a newly minted robo-device called the Personal Exoskeleton, a “wearable robot” with leg braces powered by motors and controlled by a sophisticated AI system that enables paralyzed legs to walk again—and to stand-up, step up and down, crouch and sit down, all unassisted.
I saw Piette take a stroll in New York City when he trundled up in a wheelchair to test-drive the Personal Exoskeleton during a demo at Cure, the healthcare innovation campus that recently became the US home for Paris-based Wandercraft, the company that makes Piette’s robo-suit.
Using human arms made powerful by weightlifting and exercise, Piette first lifted himself into the exoskeleton. He tightened several straps, tucked his feet into special stirrups, and stood up. With motors quietly whirring, he took a step, then another as this 35-year-old former Ducati motorcycle mechanic grinned broadly and headed to a stair, which he slowly ascended—a small step for most of us, but a huge step for Kevin Piette.
From Science-Fiction to Reality
“The exoskeleton is a suit that you wear by tying it to your limbs and your torso,” Wandercraft CEO Matthieu Masselin explained to me. “It's equipped with motors that will move your joints in a synchronous way to reproduce human motions. It’s run by algorithms who know what a standing up motion looks like, what a walking motion looks like, and we have a computer that executes those algorithms and continuously monitors what's going on so that if you are slightly unbalanced, it'll correct this in real time.”
The system works using sensors embedded in the bot that detect movement in parts of a user’s body that still function, which triggers movements and changes in the machine. “If somebody is paralyzed from the waist down, we're going to put a sensor on their back so that with the motion of the upper body, they will be able to control the device,” Masselin said.“If the person is paralyzed at a higher level, then we could always put the device on the head.”
To be sure, this isn’t exactly Avatar, the film about a future where anyone can climb into advanced exoskeletons and use them to run and jump and lift impossibly heavy objects—and, in the movie, to fend off exo-enhanced bad guys on a distant moon. Nor is it a full-on robot-human hybrid like Robocop, since no machine parts are implanted or permanent in the user, although there are scientists working on this. Some companies, like Elon Musk’s Neuralink, are also tinkering with technology controlled by brain implants that “read” neural chatter in the motor cortex and translate them into movement. Truly synching brains to machines, however, is probably decades away.
For now, the Personalized Exoskeleton is a wearable bot that offers baby steps into a future where machines will not only help someone like Piette walk again, but also could lead to machines created in the future that allow people who are not disabled to run faster, jump higher, and, if the occasion arises, to ward off bad guys.
Imagine Amazon warehouse workers who aren’t replaced by machines but become fused with them; super soldiers who are able to double-step march farther and faster into combat; or exoskeleton-enhanced athletes who can outrun non-hybrids. Perhaps one day you will be able to buy your own “exo” to power-walk to work—50 miles away—or to carry heavy loads around the house.
Masselin, who is 35 years old and not disabled, tells me that he’s tried the Personalized Exoskeleton himself. I asked him how it felt. “You feel safe,” he said. “The first thing you realize is: ‘wow, this can really get me up, and I'm not going to have any issue with this.”
I asked him if it could make him stronger at some point. “Definitely,” he said. “I'm confident that at some point it could make people faster and more agile. I have no doubt about it. Not now, but in the near future.”
A Decade of Progress
Currently, the Personalized Exoskeleton helps a user to take only slow, deliberate steps, and to climb a stair or two. But this is better than earlier versions of this tech, including an exoskeleton that I saw demonstrated back in 2012.That “exo” was awkward and required the user to use crutches and to wear a heavy backpack stuffed with instruments. A human assistant walked behind to operate the device via a control box attached to the backpack with a wire.
According to Piette, Wandercraft’s new technology is less clunky than most other exoskeletons. It also is self-stabilizing, meaning that users don’t need crutches or canes. Nor does it require another person to follow behind to guide the machine.
Masselin said they are working with the FDA to get the Personal Exoskeleton approved for use in the home and out and about, say, on the streets of Paris. An earlier exoskeleton, model from the Atalante X, has been approved by the FDA for use in rehabilitation centers in Europe, the US, and Brazil for people with spinal cord injuries, strokes, head trauma,and other injuries and conditions that impact motor movement.
Exoskeletons aren’t cheap. Wandercraft didn’t tell me what they’re charging for the Personal Exoskeleton, but most advanced exos run upwards of $100,000, including the Indego Personal from Ekso Bionics, the Personal 6.0 Exoskeleton by Lifeward, and ExoAtlet-II by ExoAtlet Asia. Medicare recently started covering some exos, including the Atalante X. The company expects Medicare to cover the Personal Exoskeleton, too.
One key factor of Piette’s success is something the engineering team at Wandercraft can’t build or program into their robo-human hybrid:his state of mind. “I want this to work, and I have a strong willpower.” he said, a man who not only believed he would walk again, but also became a champion disabled tennis player and motorcycle racer not long after his accident. Piette also has participated in the exoskeleton race at the Cybathon games held in Switzerland, where disabled athletes compete using powered prosthetics that range from exoskeletons and powered prosthetic limbs to devices that aid in seeing and brain-machine interfaces.
His accomplishments as an athlete are why Wandercraft chose him in 2020 to be a test pilot for their new technology, knowing that his verve and resolve would combine with the algorithms, gears and processors to create a potent blending of human and machine. Piette also believes that exoskeletons are part of a movement to better integrate disabled people into society, which is long overdue.
“People are finally able to realize what our daily lives look like,” he said, “and I can feel things are changing around me. When I think about 10 years ago compared to now, I see great improvements, and for that I am excited.”
This article is adapted from David Ewing Duncan’s “Futures” column on Substack, where it will appear in a slightly different form. Neither Cure nor any other organization or company has exercised any editorial influence or control over the content of this article.