--- title: "8-Year-Old Boy With Cerebral Palsy Walks Using Robotic Exoskeleton" description: "With the help of the Atlas 2030 exoskeleton, eight-year-old David from Mexico, who suffers from cerebral palsy, is learning to walk." date: "2022-10-21" modified: "2022-10-21" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/cerebral-palsy-walks-robotic-exoskeleton" categories: - "Robotics" - "Robots and Machines" tags: - "exoskeletons" - "rehabilitation" - "robotic exoskeleton" - "the digest" --- # 8-Year-Old Boy With Cerebral Palsy Walks Using Robotic Exoskeleton ![With the help of the Atlas 2030 exoskeleton, eight-year-old David from Mexico, who suffers from cerebral palsy, is learning to walk.]() *\Image: CLAUDIO CRUZ/AFP via Getty Images\* ## Learning to Walk A titanium robotic exoskeleton is helping an eight-year-old boy in Mexico learn to walk after being wheelchair-bound for most of his life. The boy, David, suffers from cerebral palsy, a group of neurological disorders that surfaces during early childhood and hinders a child's ability to control their muscle movements. In effect, it makes it extremely difficult for an affected child to walk and maintain their balance and posture. As you can imagine, rehabilitating a child with cerebral palsy is a long and arduous process. But now, David's speeding up his rehabilitation with the help of the battery-powered Atlas 2030 exoskeleton, developed by [award winning]() Spanish roboticist Elena García Armada. According to the [European Patent Office](), it's the "world's first adaptable robotic exoskeleton for children." ## Close Support Even with just a handful of physical therapy sessions with the exoskeleton so far, it's already making a massive difference. "He's taking his first steps," David's mother, Guadalope Gardoso, [told *Agence France-Presse*](). "That's a joy for him." "At first it scared him and his hands were very tense, and now I see that he's already holding the marker pen and starting to draw or (play with) the ball." The Atlas 2030 exoskeleton [earned its creator]() the 2022 European Inventor Award. It works by supporting a child's lower torso and strapping their legs to the exoskeleton's robotic ones. Children further along in their rehabilitation can potentially walk in it almost without any external help, but in David's case the exoskeleton was guided by a hanging trolley. ## Road to Rehab For physical therapists, it's a game changer. "It makes us very excited to have the exoskeleton and that we can even use it now to achieve all of this," said physical therapist Arturo Palafox Sanchez, [as quoted by *EuroNews*]()*.* The Association for People with Cerebral Palsy (APAC) in Mexico says it hopes to help over 200 children suffering from cerebral palsy across the country with the device**.** According to APAC director Guadalupe Maldonado not only does the exoskeleton help reach rehabilitation in "record time," it also boosts the children's morale, *EuroNews* reports. And that, friends, is worth its weight in titanium. **More on exoskeletons:** *[Scientists Show Off "Wearable Muscles" You Can Strap on to Get Way Stronger]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()