At First Steps Wellness Center in Regina, Canada, a unique $100,000 robotic exoskeleton called Trexo is allowing children with developmental disorders to walk, often for the first time, proving doctors wrong who said it would be impossible. Leo, a boy born with a rare genetic disease that left him with a prognosis that walking would be forever out of reach, has been strapped into the Trexo walker where his mother Anna Begelfer has watched him learn to walk and develop musculature that enables him to take steps on his own. The donated machine uses sensors at the hip and knees to detect how the child is moving their lower trunk and legs, then sends commands to motors that move the exoskeleton to assist their steps or complete them entirely, and unlike other walking devices, Trexo allows the child’s feet to touch the ground for better bone development and sensory feedback.
Trexo Robotics was born from personal experience when two University of Waterloo friends, Manmeet Maggu and Rahul Udasi, learned that Maggu’s nephew in India was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, a disease affecting some 500,000 American children, and would have to spend most of his life in a wheelchair suffering health complications from so much sitting. After discovering no such exoskeleton device existed on the market, they spent years prototyping designs and 3D printing components before Maggu flew to India to try it on his nephew, and though the first attempt failed, they made modifications in his brother’s factory and watched the child try to walk for the first time. The device is currently marketed as an exercise and therapy device to circumvent FDA regulatory delays, making it available for lease or rent at a price similar to a new car since insurance won’t cover it. But as Anna Begelfer watched her son Leo do the impossible, experiencing butterflies as she said “I can’t believe” he could walk like other kids, she proved that even though the Trexo comes at a steep price, you simply can’t put a price on a miracle that gives a child the gift of walking when doctors said it would never happen.
