Paralyzed Man Unable to Walk After Maker of His Powered Exoskeleton Tells Him It's Now Obsolete
Paralyzed Man Unable to Walk After Maker of His Powered Exoskeleton Tells Him It's Now Obsolete
Michael Straight said Lifeward refused to repair his $100,000 exoskeleton, which only had a minor issue with its battery.
A former jockey who was left paralyzed from the waist down after a horse riding accident was able to walk again thanks to a cutting-edge piece of robotic tech: a $100,000 ReWalk Personal exoskeleton.
When one of its small parts malfunctioned, however, the entire device stopped working. Desperate to gain his mobility back, he reached out to the manufacturer, Lifeward, for repairs. But it turned him away, claiming his exoskeleton was too old, *404 media *reports.
"After 371,091 steps my exoskeleton is being retired after 10 years of unbelievable physical therapy," Michael Straight posted on Facebook earlier this month. "The reasons why it has stopped is a pathetic excuse for a bad company to try and make more money."
Fortunately, Lifeward eventually capitulated and Straight was able to get his exoskeleton repaired — but that was only after an intense campaign in which he went on local TV, got highlighted in a horse industry publication, and gained steam on social media. If it weren't for that, he could still be struggling to find a way to get his mobility back again.
Uhg, needed bad PR before they changed their mind
Yeah, gaining public attention is definitely what saved him here. Who would ever spend $100k on an exoskeleton if the company is only going to support it for 5 years, and won't even help with a minor repair?
The future is stupid, we were promised jetpacks, not planned obsolescence mobility devices.
Oh, we already have jetpacks. They're just not affordable for the average person and are insanely dangerous to fly with. Also, afaik, they only get less than an hour of flight time.
This is why nobody should ever put any tech in their brain. Among 50 billion other reasons.
Oh that already happened too. A bunch of blind people got implants and the company abandoned them.
The first thing that came to mind.
This is turning into a pattern now, fuck, I wish the lawmakers would fucking do something about it!Context for other readers: 'Their Bionic Eyes Are Now Obsolete and Unsupported' by Eliza Strickland and Mark Harris.
It's a disgrace.That came to mind, too. If this shit isn't open source it is not worth spit.
Fucking exactly!
Prosthetics that are no longer supported, should be fully open sourced.And the copyright should immediately expire.
Support your products, or let others do it.
I work as a biomed, our hospital had to buy completely new sets of a type of ultrasound machine we have. Why?
Because in order to do the yearly preventative maintenance you have to go through the manufacturers program to test calibration. They stopped supporting it this year and shut it down. Legit these machines were working just fine, but now in order to keep up with verifying accuracy they're essentially bricked. They did it on the exact day they hit the year mark that they legally were required to support in order to sell medical grade equipment passed.
This is only going to get worse, not better.
Absolutely 100% this. Or at the very least, have all schematics and software source code and other such things placed in escrow so if the company refuses to support them there is some kind of option. This goes double for anything implanted.
The IP and copyright laws is century old and in dire need to get reformed. Nintendo being able to takedown a video just because it show the title screen of one of their game for literally a split second is ridiculous. Or a studio able to take all of the revenue from someone's video because they hummed a tune for a few seconds.
Tbh, I didn't even think prosthetics could be proprietary. It's kinda ghoulish to make it so they can be "outdated" when needing minor stuff repaired.
Poor guy, I guess legally he hasn’t got a leg to stand on.
Thnx, that was some dark humor that really hit the spot for me.
He shouldn’t stand for this!
He can't. He's paralyzed and his exoskeleton is broken.
On a more serious note, the 404media article (login wall) reports the problem was that the wristwatch controller for the exoskeleton had its battery wire's solder joint break. They seem to be trying to frame it as a right to repair issue, but that's a trivial repair for anyone with basic electronics experience.
It’s a trivial repair assuming that’s the extent of the damage and there’s not any quirks associated with an extremely complex medical device that has no documentation whatsoever. Like maybe after not having the controller’s power supply connected for such a length of time there needs to be a calibration process upon bringing it back to life that can only be done with proprietary software
The biggest thing though is that by going in and fixing it yourself you open yourself to the possibility that the company will now say “oh this was worked on by someone else and that’s why it’s broken, we won’t work on it now”. That’s the state of repair rights in America, vendors are openly hostile to people who fix their own things even if they do it sufficiently. We used to have political representation that gave us regulations to allow us to work on and even modify our cars without impacting the warranty but that’s been eroded and there’s not really anything of that nature for tech stuff (other than judgements saying broken warranty seals don’t count for anything)
Best to use the archived links bypasses the login barrier, as well as paywalls.
Guilty upvote for you
This is something I wish cyberpunk media touched more on.
One thing I always thought about when playing cyberpunk 2077 is why wouldn't companies have a failsafe for their equipment being used against them. In the game, you can use cyber decks from Arisaka and Militech and be able to hack and assault their infrastructure and employees with impunity.
I am not really sure companies would allow that...
Overlooking the concept of a failsafe? How did they get past the concept of the subscription model?
I always imagined that it was due to a higher level of computer literacy amongst the consumer population. An hour after a corpo releases a new piece of tech under a subscription model, the software has been cracked and pirated all over the net.
Fuck me I didn't think about that... owning your own implants? Goddamn!
Presumably those failsafes can be circumvented and your character being a cool hacker applies those exploits to their hardware.
why wouldn’t companies have a failsafe for their equipment being used against them
Because they got tired of paying for the whiny engineers that would have to implement the failsafe and so they fired them all.
so they fired them all
Even fictional evil companies need to meet goals set by the board.
That's the problem with cyberpunk as a genre. Its to cool. The first Deus Ex did it right. If it was in the hands of a better developer Watch Dogs could have too.
Ghost in the Shell called it thirty years ago.
I work in appliance repair. My favorite appliance to fix are sub zero refrigerators. They're easy to work on, straight forward and the company continues to support their product as far back as models from the 1970s.
Subzero makes nothing more than household appliances a thankless industry plagued by planner obsolescence and they can supply parts for their appliances longer than a medical company.
Got any recommendations in the 5k range?
This is a very good question.
I'm assuming you mean a range around $5000?
In that case there's really not much in that specific price range.
Ranges in general can cost between 500 and 3000 dollars for a regular range you can get at your local appliance retailer. Here in the states that would be like home Depot or Lowe's.
If you wanted more high end than that you'd have to go much higher up in price. Like past $10000. It's a weird market for ranges.
I recommend Frigidaire for cooking appliances in general they make really good ranges. For less than $1000 dollars you can get a very decent appliance.
Anything related to healthcare has no business being any closer to the whims of "the market" than the public roads.
It would be unheard of for a government to stop maintaining a public road because whomever was supplying some ingredient of the asphalt said that particular mix is "to old and the new mix is not compatible with the roads created using the old mix".
They don't want to do it anymore, fine, then provide whatever is needed for someone else to maintain it for the cost of the materials to print/email/upload to GitHub the technical documents. It should not be legal to get someone hooked on your life altering medical device then rug pull them like this.
Imagine if Intel snapped and disabled Stephen Hawking's wheelchair and computer, and he needed to pay for a new one with a different voice, absolutely helpless without it.
371k steps over 10 years is like 100 steps per day. Is it really slow, or did he only use it once a week?
My guess is he would use a wheelchair at home where the area is prepared to accommodate it. The exoskeleton is likely slower and harder to wear around the house, but can make him mobile in places where a wheelchair can't go.
Hope he can make it to at least a million steps to bring down his per step cost below 10 cents.
[Insert Steel Ball Run Reference Here Because Someone Mentioned A Paralyzed Jockey]
Anyway...
Human Greed is what's obsolete and it is beyond past time to end support for it.
cant a battery be rigged to fit? no modders around?
I was ready to hear something like a story from someone who had signed onto a medical trial and was upset the trial was ending. Nope, instead an absurdly short support period that seemingly is fed by the same culture of replacement over repair that has infected our economy.
He should send it to StezStixFix.
Immeasurably great reporting. This was painful to yet, but a blessing to know.
Now he's Sitting Straight, I suppose. Sorry, that's in awful taste.
Sorry, that’s in awful taste.
You can't apologize for being an asshole before you are an asshole, because it just proves you aren't sorry for being an asshole.
Well, I don't agree that making an offensive joke is necessarily being an arsehole, but I suppose you are right in principle.
This very much sucks.
Edit: message received. Sorry.
I don't think anyone should expect a battery replacement to be free after 10 years, but it shouldn't cost $100,000
Right? It's a frigging battery.
Surely we can get a group of battery techs and mechanical engineers together to come up with a solution.
Hell, I've been bastardizing the "wrong" batteries into devices since the mid-70's, while today I'm usually replacing crappy built-in batteries with 18650's. And I'm no EE, just have a little skill and vision.
Surely the battery spec on this is pretty clear, and it's an off-the-shelf tech (not some odd chemistry devised by the company). Not that it really matters - a replacement merely needs to fit in the space, and match voltage and current requirements.
Respectfully requesting that in the future, you read articles before replying.
And:
According to Straight, the issue was caused by a piece of wiring that had come loose from the battery that powered a wristwatch used to control the exoskeleton. This would cost peanuts for Lifeward to fix up, but it refused to service anything more than five years old, Straight said.
"I find it very hard to believe after paying nearly $100,000 for the machine and training that a $20 battery for the watch is the reason I can't walk anymore?" he wrote on Facebook.
This is all over a battery in a watch.
lol lol
You: he was about to move around for a few years and should be happy with that and accept his paralyzed state
dude's paid $10k a year just to do what we can do for free. I don't think that's "pretty good". if I pay $100k on anything it better work for life
It's an exoskeleton, not a consumer electronic, what a disgusting thing to say
Yours is one of the most well deserved downvotes. Dude got paralyzed, literally cannot walk or stand anymore, received the exoskeleton (which was paid for in full by a fundraiser back in 2015) and the company simply decided "nah, we don't touch anything older than 5 years", knowing full well that this is NOT a disposable device and that Michael would need it for the rest of his life.
Keep in mind Lifewalk, the company behind the exoskeleton, didn't even try to come up with a public bullshit reason to deny maintenance to a device that they knew full well would be used for the rest of the person's life, or upsell a newer model.
I mean it's a $100,000 medical device, basically. Imagine if they just abandoned any other medical equipment like that? Sorry, your pacemaker isn't supported anymore.
That’s true for consumer electronics. However, more expensive things like cars are usually kept running for much longer.
Cars are probably covered differently by law, like minimum years producer has to offer replacement parts and such. Probably all boils down to the contract for that exoskeleton. Definitely not an excuse for that petty company trying to suck tens of thousands of dollars instead of a simple repair.
