Paralysed Student 'Walks' Again At Graduation

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Austin Whitney is a history and political science major at the University of California-Berkeley. During an accident in 2007 his car struck badly with a tree after he drunk too much. In the result he lost both his legs and paralyzed. He received his diploma in great cheers when walk across the stage using exoskeleton.

He spent nine months working with Homayoon Kazerooni, creator of the HULC exoskeleton and the eLegs rehabilitation system and able to walk not so much normally but of a great deal. Exoskeleton is strapped around his leg using a controller switch on a walker for direction guidence . It swung his legs forward, moving him toward Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and a grinning Kazerooni. The cost of this exoskeleton is about $15,000.

“The second I pressed the button and stood up, I was flooded with a series of emotions,” said Whitney at a news conference following the ceremony.  “It was overpowering,” said Whitney, who was the last graduate in the procession. “I’ve stood in the [exoskeleton] machine a lot of times before, but I knew that it would be different up here [on stage], and it truly was.”

Also sharing the stage with Whitney were his parents, Jim and Lillian Whitney, and his younger sister, Laura. “This is the greatest day of my life,” said his mother.

“This technology can be accessible to a large number of people, and that is our mission,” said Kazerooni. “We’re telling the community that this is possible. This is just the beginning of our work.”