by Andy Corbley
Good News Network
A unique robotic exoskeleton is allowing children with developmental disorders to walk—often for the first time.
First Steps Wellness Center of Regina, Saskatchewan is eager to get families to come by and try it out. It can be used to correct a child’s gait or help them take their first steps, and is suitable for a variety of conditions including spinal cord injuries and cerebral palsy.
The center received the Trexo exoskeleton out of the goodness of someone’s heart. The $100,000 machine was donated to help children like Leo, a boy born with a rare genetic disease which left him a prognosis that walking would be forever out of reach.
As his mother Anna Begelfer has watched, Leo, latched into the Trexo walker, learned to walk and develop a musculature that has him able to take steps on his own. It’s something his mother was told would be impossible.
“He can walk. He can be like everybody else; walk like other kids,” Begelfer told CBS News. “I have butterflies, I’m like, I can’t believe.”
Sensors at the hip and knees detect how the child is moving his lower trunk and legs, then send commands to motors that move the exoskeleton in order to assist their steps or complete them entirely. Unlike other walking devices, Trexo allows the child’s feet to touch the ground, which First Step’s Andy Schmidt says makes a big difference.
“It’s better for the bones, it’s better for feedback for the child. I mean Imagine if you or I were wandering around on clouds of air, what would that feel like? It wouldn’t give much feedback,” Schmidt said.
Like many of the world’s best inventions, Trexo Robotics was born out of personal experience. Manmeet Maggu and Rahul Udasi, two friends who were attending the University of Waterloo were distraught when they learned Maggu’s nephew in India was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, a disease that affects some 500,000 American children.
Looking into what that would mean for the child, the pair learned that he would have to spend most of his life in a wheelchair, and suffer the health complications resulting from so much sitting. Imagining that an exoskeleton could help, they quickly learned there was no such device available on the market.
It was years of prototyping designs, 3D printing components, and asking Udasi for help before Maggu flew to India to try it out on his nephew.
“The first time we tried it it didn’t work,” Maggu told Tech Crunch. “But my brother has a factory in India in Delhi, so we made some more modifications and tried it out again and I watched my nephew try to walk with the device for the first time.”
There are currently six Trexo exoskeletons sold and in use today, which was possible by marketing it as an exercise and therapy device. It allowed Maggu to circumvent some major delays in jumping through FDA regulatory hoops but also meant that it couldn’t be covered by any insurance policies, so it’s currently available for lease or rent to help families absorb its cost.
The bottom line is that even though it comes at a price similar to a new car, young Leo wasn’t ever supposed to be able to walk, but with the help of Trexo, he can—a miracle—and you can’t put a price on a miracle.
Meanwhile Toyota recently unveiled a four-legged mobility robot that can go where wheels cannot, and specializes in tasks that are difficult in a wheelchair such as climbing up stairs and positioning passengers to get into cars.
Debuted by the carmaker at the 2025 Japan Mobility Show, it consists of an ergonomic seat mounted on four mechanical legs that are designed to mimic some of the surest-footed animals on Earth like the mountain goat.
Called the Walk Me, it’s compact, adaptable, and represents a huge advancement for the company’s assisted mobility division.
Each leg can bend in multiple ways, lift, and move independently of the others to ensure that stability is maintained while walking over uneven ground or obstacles. They’re also covered with a soft and friendly-looking material to hide the mechanical components.
The system’s real showpiece is climbing stairs. One of the legs will test the step’s height, and determine how far the other legs have to push up to reach it. A suite of sensors and a LiDAR system continuously scan the surround for obstacles or potential banana skins like a child’s toy car.
Distribution of force and weight between the legs feed into a calculation on the seat position, which is adjusted automatically to ensure the user isn’t tipped off in any direction. Sensors in the front apply a braking system if something moves quickly across its path.
A battery capable of operating for a whole 12-hour day is hidden beneath the seat, while voice-activated commands such as “kitchen” or “faster” can guide the legs directly, as can a set of handles positioned alongside the seat that contain manual controls.
When it’s time to dismount the chair, the folding system retracts the legs similar to how a goat or other ungulate lays down, and in 30 seconds the unit becomes small enough to put into the back of all but the smallest cars.
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