Commercial Exoskeletons From the Eyes of Physiotherapist

How are exoskeletons perceived from the point of view of a professional physiotherapist?  What information is available to them and what do they look for in a powered exoskeleton?  We often write about what new ideas and inspirations xxsearchers and entrepreneurs have in the wearable robotics field.  We also try to monitor the public’s feelings towards this emerging market.  But what about the middle person?  Physiotherapists are the people that have to learn how to operate and troubleshoot exoskeletons on the spot while working with their clients.  These are also the same people that research commercially available rehabilitation devices and recommend them to hospitals and rehabilitation gyms.

In this featured video, Anna Moriarty (Masters in Neurology and Physiotherapy) leads a 30 minute seminar on the capabilities of the five commercially available mobile exoskeletons in 2015: Hal 3 (CYBERDYNE), Rex (Rex Bionics), ReWalk (ReWalk Robotics), Ekso (Ekso Bionics), Indego (Parker Hannifin).

If you are a professional who works on exoskeletons and want to see how medical professionals view the technology or if you are a person that wants to know how five products listed above differ from each other then I highly recommend that you watch this video!

What I learned about professional physiotherapist?

• They are not swayed by marketing videos.
• Physiotherapists crave exact numbers: how long is the training time, how many steps can a user climb and in exactly how many minutes…
• They want more independent clinical trials with complete, easily accessible results.
• All of them need more information in order to match exoskeleton models and capabilities to the right user, for example, a paraplegic with no motor control who needs to stand and operate an industrial machine can benefit from the Rex, a person that has some motor function and would buy and use an exoskeleton for home-use for 4+ years would be best served by ReWalk…

The presentation by Anna Moriarty from Steps Neurological Physiotherapy offers us a secret window into how a professional physiotherapist perceives the currently available commercial mobile exoskeletons.