£90,000 'robolegs' that freed Sophie Morgan from 9 years Jail of wheelchair

• Car crash left her on wheelchair 9 years ago
• One of the first people to take advantage from robotic exoskeleton called Rex
• Her boyfriend of 5 years saw her for the first time on her legs

Sophie Morgan, 27, suffered a tragic accident that left her backbone
shattered, paralysed for nine years, now from the waist down, her legs encased in £90,000 of motorised carbon-fibre, she is RoboCop. The control is in a joystick that is built in to the armrests of her suit.

Sophie, was an aspiring television presenter who appeared in Channel 4’s Paralympics coverage. And now she is one of the first people in the world to benefit from a robotic exoskeleton called Rex, the first major advance in the treatment of paralysis in decades. Powered exoskeletons – metal and carbon-fibre frameworks that encase part of the body – allow paralysed patients (even those who have no movement from the neck down) to walk. It is this technology that will, arguably, mark the end of the wheelchair.
Sophie first tried Rex in May. ‘I was in a hotel room in London and my family and friends were with me,’ she recalls. ‘It was a bizarre feeling. I’m 5ft 10in and the floor looked so far away. I felt safe but it was all an emotional blur. Afterwards I couldn’t believe that I had been walking around, and wanted to do it all over again.’

Her boyfriend Tom, 28, a chef, whom she met five years ago, says: ‘It was the first time I’ve seen her standing up.’

Sophie adds: ‘It was wonderful to be eye to eye with each other. We just hugged and hugged.’
Once in, the only movement needed is the strength to operate a small joystick, which instructs 29 micro-controllers within the machine to react within milliseconds. The user can move in all directions, sit down, and ascend and descend stairs. There are currently ten in existence around the world and only 30 people have tried Rex.

It is completely self-supporting, unlike the ReWalk suit used by 32-year-old Claire Lomas in this year’s London Marathon which uses crutches for balance.

Rex weighs nearly 6st – about the same as an 11-year-old child – and is relatively bulky, yet experts say that within the next few decades the devices will be small and light enough to slip on under a pair of jeans. For Sophie, her greatest achievement so far with Rex was a walk along the beach at Brighton. ‘I thought people would stare but I think I was such an odd sight that they avoided looking at me,’ she says.

There are 20 Ekso units around the world but just one in the UK – at Prime Physio, a sports injury centre in Melbourn, Cambridgeshire. The company also has an exoskeleton in pre-production for  the US Army, enabling the wearer to carry more than 15st in addition to their  normal load.