Paralysed man learns to walk again with robot skeleton

A 21-year-old man has become the first tetraplegic in the world to learn how to walk again using a robotic 'suit' controlled by his thoughts.

Rob Camm, from Gloucestershire, was paralysed from the neck down after a car crash two years ago just before he was about to start university.

The former rugby player spent months in hospital and was confined to a wheelchair and is reliant on a ventilator to help him breathe.

But thanks to an exoskeleton strapped to his body and controlled by brain signals recorded by electrodes attached to his skull, he has been able to walk again.

The former rugby player is the first person in the world to control the wearable robot, which he calls Rex, with brain signals as most people use a joy stick which he is unable to do.

The exoskeleton, which is attached to his torso and legs decodes the signals from 79 electrodes and sends them to the legs of the machine - which is powered by hydraulics - and steps forward as he thinks about making the movement.

He said: "It effectively does what it says on the tin really. It is a robotic thing you sort of sit in, is the closest thing I can explain it as, and then you're strapped into it and it moves and you're strapped into it so you move with it.

"I have no idea how it works at all. People that are a lot more clever than me have worked that out."

Sporty Rob had just played his final rugby match for his local team Dursley RFC when he was involved in a car crash in September 2013.

He was just days away from starting pre-season rugby training at York University where he was due to study Politics, Philosophy and Economics.

The accident left him paralysed from the neck down and he spent 96 days on his back at the intensive care unit at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol before being transferred to a specialist.

In April this year, he started working with experts at Rex Bionics in the UK and Rome to try out their 'exoskeleton'

The machine - one of just 17 in the world - is kept at a specialist unit in Northampton which Rob can visit.