A robotic suit that lets someone with a spinal-cord injury stand up, look a friend in the eye, or stir a pot on the stove without anyone's help just cleared its biggest hurdle. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency that vets medical devices before they reach the public, has authorized commercial sale of Eve, a personal exoskeleton built by French company Wandercraft.
Eve is not meant to replace a wheelchair. It's a tool for the moments when standing matters more than rolling – a conversation, a meal prep, brushing teeth, moving around the house without asking for a helping hand. Wandercraft says any adult with a spinal cord injury can use it, regardless of where along the spine the damage occurred, as long as they can operate the control joystick.
The device straps on like a rigid vest, with bands securing the torso, waist, thighs, legs, and feet. A headrest, armrests, a front safety bar, and a rear handle round out the frame, the last one letting a caregiver steady the wearer if needed. Twelve motors, built into the hips, knees, and ankles, do the walking, while onboard sensors constantly read and correct balance, whether the person is standing still or in motion. That self-balancing trick, no crutches or walker required, is what Wandercraft points to as its edge over earlier exoskeletons.
Meet Eve: The Personal Exoskeleton Built for Everyday Life
Before delivery, technicians calibrate the machine to each user's height, leg length, and joint flexibility. From there, a joystick adapted to the person's hand mobility drives everything: sitting, standing, walking forward or backward, turning, side-stepping, and even shifting weight from foot to foot in a looser free mode. Top speed is a fixed 0.25 meters per second (0.56 mph), deliberately slow for safety, and a full charge lasts up to four hours, per the company's specifications. If power runs out, the motors disengage, and a braking mechanism lowers the wearer to the ground gradually rather than letting them drop.
The FDA clearance leans on a study run at the Kessler Foundation and the James J. Peters VA Medical Center, published in the Journal of Visualized Experiments. Sixteen patient-caregiver pairs took part – seven patients had high neck injuries causing tetraplegia (paralysis affecting all four limbs), and nine had upper-back injuries causing paraplegia (affecting lower limbs). After medical screening, fitting, and four training sessions, every pair completed the study's two benchmark tests: standing, walking, and sitting back down within three minutes, plus a six-minute walk covering a minimum distance. Fifteen of the sixteen suited up in under 10 minutes, and all of them managed to take it off within that window.
Nearly 69% hit their target walking speed, and 87.5% finished all six everyday tasks tested, like opening doors or cooking. Performance climbed steadily as sessions went on. Seventeen safety incidents were logged, eight tied directly to the device, mostly skin irritation and muscle spasms, plus one fall with no injury. Nobody dropped out over safety concerns.
Eve is helpful but still not perfect for everyone. It's strictly an indoor, flat-surface device – no stairs, curbs, ramps, wet or icy floors, crowds, or public streets, a limit the company attributes to the suit's slow pace. Users can't exceed 100 kg (220 lb) in weight or 1.94 m (6ft4) in height, with further caps on leg length and hip width. A certified caregiver must always be present, trained alongside the patient through remote screening, in-person clinical sessions, and a five-session course before the custom-built unit, prescribed by a doctor, goes home with them.
Wandercraft announced US sales this month and says Medicare, the veterans' health system, and workers' compensation insurance are already covering costs for some US patients, with financing available otherwise. We've no word on unit pricing.
The company hasn't set a timeline yet for Eve’s landing in other countries. "FDA clearance showed that Eve was ready to move forward," said Matthieu Masselin, co-founder and CEO of Wandercraft. "Today is about making it a reality for the people we built it for."
If you were a subscriber to the Daily News from the Art of Liberty Foundation, we have LEFT SUBSTACK! They were censoring us. You can find our LEAVING LOUDLY article HERE, with evidence of the censorship and WHY we believe they were censoring us.
We are sending this from our NEW censorship-resistant publishing platform that we just built for $25,000. We say "Censorship-Resistant" because while we have removed Substack's ability to stop sending you our content, we can (AND ARE!) being censored at the spam-filter level! Even though we have never spammed anyone and adhere to the best practices for e-mail newsletters!
You MUST whitelist News@ArtOfLiberty.email, AND even that is not a guarantee since we are dealing with organized crime and they are cheating!
Important News from the Art of Liberty Foundation has moved to ArtOfLiberty.Foundation, the Daily News from the Art of Liberty Foundation has moved to Voluntaryist.News, and Five Meme Friday has moved to FiveMemeFri.org. PLEASE BOOKMARK THESE NEW WEBSITES!
Finally, we need help to keep publishing! The new websites ended up costing over $5000 more than expected. Freedom isn't FREE! Please help us ckeep bringing you (and others!) the news, exposing honey pots like Substack, and keep publishing hard-hitting investigations and journalism from a principled voluntaryist perspective.
A $5 monthly Liberty Membership gets you access to all my books in ePub.
A $50 yearly membership gets you a paperback copy of my new book we are announcing this week: The Greatest Theft in Human History – How the Banks and “Government” Will Steal at Least $1.40 MILLION from the Typical Worker… “Legally” Domestic includes free shipping; international gets a $10 S&H credit and pays intl. shipping at cost!
Sponsors at the $125, $500, $1000, $5000, and $25,000 President's Club Level get a sneak peek at my new book: Organized Crime Theory (OCT) - The Surprisingly Scholarly and Well-Evidenced Thesis that "Government" is Intergenerational Organized Crime + AMAZING perks from T-Shirts to signed high-resolution hard copies of my books to an Art of Liberty conference + Turtle Party + Concert in your town with a VIP table for you and your friends and family!
Sign up at ArtOfLiberty.org/become-liberty-member/
