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Paralyzed Man Unable to Walk After Maker of His Powered Exoskeleton Tells Him It's Now Obsolete (futurism.com)

submitted 1 month ago by Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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A former jockey who was left paralyzed from the waist down after a horse riding accident was able to walk again thanks to a cutting-edge piece of robotic tech: a $100,000 ReWalk Personal exoskeleton.

When one of its small parts malfunctioned, however, the entire device stopped working. Desperate to gain his mobility back, he reached out to the manufacturer, Lifeward, for repairs. But it turned him away, claiming his exoskeleton was too old, *404 media *reports.

"After 371,091 steps my exoskeleton is being retired after 10 years of unbelievable physical therapy," Michael Straight posted on Facebook earlier this month. "The reasons why it has stopped is a pathetic excuse for a bad company to try and make more money."

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[–] kaboom36@ani.social 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Rebuilding the original pack with new cells is semi-common practice, no need for new tooling

[–] kaboom36@ani.social 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

According to Straight, the issue was caused by a piece of wiring that had come loose from the battery that powered a wristwatch used to control the exoskeleton. This would cost peanuts for Lifeward to fix up, but it refused to service anything more than five years old, Straight said

Yeah, that's something any jackass with a soldering iron could fix in about 10 seconds

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago

Wow.

Again, the kind of fix I've done thousands of times on all sorts of devices.