GoKawiilIt’s easy to assume that Robert Woo was defined by the accident that took away his ability to walk.
Certainly, the day of his accident—14 December 2007—was a turning point. Woo, an architect working on the new Goldman Sachs headquarters in New York City, hadn’t attended his company’s holiday party the night before, and that morning he was the only one in the trailer that served as the construction-site office. He was bent over his laptop when, 30 floors above, a crane’s nylon sling gave way, sending about 6 tonnes of steel plummeting toward the trailer. The roof collapsed, folding Woo in half and smashing his face into his laptop, which smashed through his desk.
“I was conscious throughout the whole ordeal,” Woo remembers. “It was an out-of-body experience. I could hear myself screaming in pain. I could hear the voices of the rescue workers. I heard one firefighter say, ‘Don’t worry, we’re getting to you.’” The rescue workers hauled him out of the rubble and got him to the emergency room in 18 minutes flat; with one lung crushed and the other punctured, he wouldn’t have lasted much longer. In those frantic early moments, a doctor told him that he might be paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of his life. He remembers asking the doctors to let him die.
Woo simply couldn’t imagine how a paralyzed version of himself could continue living his life. Then 39 years old, he worked long hours and jetted around the world to supervise the construction of skyscrapers. More important, he had two young boys, ages 6 months and 2 years. “I couldn’t see having a life while being paralyzed from the neck down, not being able to teach my boys how to play ball,” he recalls. “What kind of life would that be?”
Robert Woo walks inside the Wandercraft facility in New York City using the company’s latest self-balancing exoskeleton. Nicole Millman
But in a Manhattan showroom last May, Woo showed that he’s not defined by that accident, which left him paralyzed from the chest down, but with the use of his arms. Instead, he has defined himself by how he has responded to his injury, and the new life he built after it.
In the showroom, Woo transferred himself from his wheelchair to a 80-kilogram (176-pound) exoskeleton suit. After strapping himself in, he manipulated a joystick in his left hand to rise from a chair and then proceeded to walk across the room on robotic legs. Woo’s steps were short but smooth, and he clanked as he walked.
This exoskeleton, from the French company Wandercraft, is one of the first to let the user walk without arm braces or crutches, which most other models require to stabilize the user’s upper body. The battery-powered exoskeleton took care of both propulsion and balance; Woo just had to steer. The bulky apparatus had a backplate that extended above Woo’s head, a large padded collar, armrests, motorized legs, and footplates. Walking across the room, he appeared to be half man, half machine. On the other side of the showroom’s plate-glass window, on Park Avenue, a kid walking by with his family came to a dead halt on the sidewalk, staring with awe at the cyborg inside.
Robert Woo prepares to walk in a Wandercraft exoskeleton; the device’s controller enables him to stand up, initiate walk mode, and choose a direction. Bryan Anselm/Redux
The amazement on the boy’s face was reminiscent of Woo’s young sons’ reaction when they saw a photo of Woo trying out an early exoskeleton, back in 2011. “Their first comment was, ‘Oh, Daddy’s in an Iron Man suit,’” he remembers. Then they asked, “When are you going to start flying?” To which Woo replied, “Well, I’ve got to learn how to walk first.”
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