A wearable robot that listens to your muscles helps people with ALS walk farther

At Toho University in Japan, 30 people living with ALS — a disease that steadily weakens the muscles — trained with HAL, a wearable robotic frame that reads the faint electrical signals of a person's own effort to move and then helps the legs complete the step. After nine sessions over four to five weeks, participants walked nearly 12 metres (39 feet) farther in a two-minute test, from about 92 metres (302 feet) to about 104 metres (341 feet), while their quality of life held steady. The study, published in Frontiers in Neurology, had no comparison group, so larger trials must confirm the effect — but every extra metre is independence a person can feel.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation