Steven Sanchez,
who was paralyzed from the waist down after a BMX accident, wears SuitX’s
Phoenix. “If I had
this it would change a lot of things,” he says. (Photo courtesy of SuitX)
(February 5, 2016) Until
recently, being paralyzed from the waist down meant using a wheelchair to get
around. And although daily life is more accessible to wheelchair users, they
still face physical and social limitations. But UC Berkeley’s Robotics and
Human Engineering Laboratory has been working to change that.
The robotics lab, a team of graduate students led by
mechanical engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni, has been working for more
than a decade to create robotic exoskeletons that allow those with limited
mobility to walk again.
This week, a new, lighter and more agile exoskeleton, for
which the Kaz lab developed the original technology, was unveiled earlier this
week: The Phoenix, by SuitX, a company that has spun off the robotics lab.
Kazerooni is its founder and CEO.
The Phoenix is lightweight, has two motors at the hips and
electrically controlled tension settings that tighten when the wearer is
standing and swing freely when they’re walking. Users can control the movement
of each leg and walk up to 1.1 miles per hour by pushing buttons integrated
into a pair of crutches. It’s powered for up to eight hours by a battery pack
worn in a backpack.
“We can’t really fix their disease,” says Kazerooni. “We
can’t fix their injury. But what it would do is postpone the secondary injuries
due to sitting. It gives a better quality of life.”
Kazarooni and his team have developed a series of
exoskeletons over the years. Their work in the field began in 2000 with a
project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to create a device,
now called the Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton (BLEEX), that could help
people carry heavier loads for longer. At that time, Kazerooni also realized
the potential use for exoskeletons in the medical field, particularly as an
alternative to wheelchairs.