ReWalk Exoskeleton

Engineer Amit Goffer, founder of the medical-imaging company Odin Medical Technologies, was left quadriplegic by an all-terrain vehicle accident in 1997. Frustrated by life in a wheelchair, he founded Argo Medical Technologies in Yokneam in 2001 and through the 2000s developed ReWalk, a battery-powered exoskeleton with motors at the hips and knees. Users wear it over their clothes, steady themselves with crutches and start each step by shifting their weight forward, which a tilt sensor detects.

In 2012 Claire Lomas, a British woman paralyzed in a riding accident, completed the London Marathon in a ReWalk over 16 days, and in 2014 it became the first exoskeleton cleared by the US FDA for personal use at home and in the community. Goffer himself cannot use it, since it requires working hands and arms; he went on to develop a standing wheelchair, UPnRIDE. ReWalk helped open the field of wearable rehabilitation robotics.