Powered Exoskeletons; What's stopping us?
tokenadult: It seems like it would just be some motors on a frame.My dad was paralyzed for the last six years of his life with a slip-and-fall injury to his second cervical vertebra. He underwent a great deal of expensive physical therapy (illustrating starkly what Medicare DOESN'T cover) and tried out several models of motorized wheelchairs. Sometimes he attempted standing in standing frames. An effective motorized exoskeleton would have to have a very sophisticated balance system, and it would have to have a very sensitive and delicate control system to respond to inputs from people who often don't have much other control of voluntary muscle movements. What would its default (at rest) position be? How much would it allow connecting gastric tubes (something my dad used) or intravenous tubes or emergency airway tubes or other medical devices?Are there challenges that make this kind of technology infeasible?My list of areas to ask questions about above is not exhaustive. If the proposed treatment is more technically complicated (that is, more expensive) than some existing treatment, and few people can afford the existing treatments to begin with, there isn't a lot of market push to develop the new treatment.