ReWalk Robotics's New Exoskeleton Lets Paraplegic Stroll the Streets of NYC | Hacker News Reader

ReWalk Robotics's New Exoskeleton Lets Paraplegic Stroll the Streets of NYC

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38 pointsmcspecter11 comments

The smile on Mr. Woo's face is what sells this for me. Yeah the device looks a little clunky and it can't match human agility, but this is the face of a man who can walk again.

I truly don't understand why the FDA has to be involved in this market segment at all. OK, if they are inserting electrodes into the person, sure, i get it. Otherwise their involvement will only serve to make the technology more expensive and limit competition due to the insane costs of navigating their approval process. It could cost a couple of million dollars to get FDA approval. It seems to me there's no reason for them to be involved. If the devices don't work people won't buy them.

> If the devices don't work people won't buy them.

This has been proved wrong so often. People buy homeopathy or fuel-line magnets etc etc, even though a lot of this stuff has been rigorously tested and shown to be useless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_saving_device

Whether the answer is regulation is a useful discussion, but "people don't buy things that don't work" is false.

Well, yeah, and people believe in gods and miracles too. That's the world we live in.

On this product though, I think it is a stretch to place it in the same category as holy water and other nonsense. An assisted walking device costing tens of thousands of dollars is very far from magnetic bracelets sold on TV. The sales process is very different. It includes a demo, during which the buyer will quickly understand whether or not the device does what it says. The FDA should not be involved unless something is going into your body. Their involvement pretty much guarantees the device will be far more expensive and competition will be limited due to the barrier to entry.

There are significant safety issues involved in strapping a robot to your body and letting it move you around, no? That's why the FDA is involved.

What? There are significant safety issues getting into a car, operating a milling machine, buying a gun, flying a quadcopter over a crowd, etc.

Sorry, I can't agree. I am afraid this is a government land-grab that will impact robotics development. Again, if there was a brain interface with electrodes going into your head I'd agree (only as far as the interface, not the robot).

Look at it this was: The device Stephen Hawking uses would not exist if it required FDA approval. The conversation starts at about $250K and rapidly goes up into the millions from there and takes years.

What do we end-up with? A bunch of really smart scientists and investors saying "fuck it" and going off to invent new ways for people to click on links.

There's a direct relationship between govenrnment intervention and the rate of progress in a field and it does not favor government involvement.

Super similar design the the Cyberdyne (note: actual company, not Skynet) HAL. Dropped in and nerded out when I was in Japan last year. Their main target is for medical and mobility assistance for the elderly but they also do some pretty interesting stuff for augmenting able bodied users: http://www.cyberdyne.jp/english/products/supporting.html.

Wow I love how Japanese tech companies are willing to embrace futuristic imagery. That HAL for disaster recovery looks like something straight out of a game. e.g Halo.

I'm actually shocked at what I felt was a not wholly unreasonable $77,000 price-point. I contracted with a prosthetics manufacturer a several years ago, and during the course of that work I recall hearing prices north of $20,000 for some of the trans-femoral prostheses with microprocessor-controlled knees. At $77,000 this unit certainly doesn't seem unreasonably expensive.

There are a lot of videos of the device on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ReWalk&search_s...

I can't believe the company behind Rework didn't give him one. I hope they end up doing so!

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