Daily Alert Archives

Israel's Technion Contributes to U.S. Soldiers' Rehabilitation

(Canadian Jewish News) Sheri Shefa - Haifa's Technion-Israel Institute of Technology professor emeritus Shlomo Maital, speaking in Toronto last week, highlighted the work of Technion electrical engineering graduate Amit Goffer, who was involved in an accident that left him unable to walk and confined to a wheelchair. Instead of being resigned to his fate, "He asked, 'How can you take people who cannot move their legs and put them on their feet and enable them to walk?'," Maital said. Goffer designed a prototype he called an exoskeleton, a mechanical device that a person wears on his legs. "When a person leans forward, the computer senses that and moves the leg, and then the other leg." The technology is called ReWalk, and it enables people with lower-limb disabilities to stand, walk, and even climb stairs. "The device is being used now in veterans hospitals in the U.S. to help soldiers who've been wounded and crippled by war to walk. And you can imagine what that feels like for a 21-year-old ex-Marine who is in a wheelchair, to be able to stand up and walk," he said.
2012-01-27 00:00:00
Full Article