was because I was so strong and fit.”
After 28 days in the hospital, Daniel moved back into his
mother’s house. “One day I’m laying in bed feeling sorry for
myself when my mom comes into the room. She sits down
and says, ‘Son, I’ll always support you. But I’m going to die a
long time before you do. So unless you plan on laying in bed
the rest of your life, you best get to work.’”
Daniel went to work. “Rehab city for a solid year,” he
says. “I accepted my situation, and decided that the wheel-
chair was not going to be my burden. I was going to be a
burden to the chair.”
He soon recognized that a paraplegic’s life is defined by
transitions: in and out of bed, in and out of a car, back and
forth to the bathroom. Building on his active childhood and
the exacting physical training he’d done in Job Corps, Dan-
iel forged himself into a master of transitions. He learned to
slip in and out of his wheelchair with ease. A few years after
his accident, Daniel logged time driving for Uber and Lyft in
the Pensacola area. Only a handful of passengers suspected
he was disabled at all.
“You have to be willing to take chances,” Daniel says.
“Dirt bikes taught me countless lessons. One being that if
you’re not sure how a situation is going to turn out, you go
full throttle to find out as quick as possible. That’s how I
decided to live in this wheelchair, full throttle. ”
One day, about a year after his accident, Daniel received
a phone call from his physical therapist at West Florida
Rehabilitation Institute. There was a man from IHMC who
wanted to talk to him, she said.
“That’s how I met Peter,” Daniel says.eter Neuhaus grew up in an apartment on the
West Side of Manhattan, the son of two psychol-
ogists. He graduated from MIT with a degree in
mechanical engineering and earned his mas-
ter’s at UC Berkeley. After a stint teaching school, he
returned to Berkeley for his doctorate. His thesis advisor
was Homayoon Kazerooni, Ph.D., a pioneer in powered exo-
skeletons who founded two companies that manufacture
commercial exos that are approved by the FDA.
After earning a Ph.D. and working for a Silicon Val-
ley software startup for a few years, Dr. Neuhaus and his
family moved to Pensacola, where he joined the program
at IHMC.
In the early 2000s, the field of wearable robotics,
broadly defined as mechanical devices that enhance the
physical performance of the user, experienced exponen-
tial growth in research and programs. In the U.S., the work
was supported by the federal Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA), which liberally funded a pro-
gram for “human performance augmentation,” robotic
devices that would boost the strength, speed, and stamina of
able-bodied military service members. Major universities,
along with military contractors such as Raytheon and Lock-
heed Martin, pursued research for robotic devices that could
be used in factories and fulfillment centers as well as on the
battlefield. Internationally, automakers including Toyota,
Honda, and Mitsubishi launched similar efforts.
The main challenge, engineers discovered, was power.
Pneumatic and hydraulic sources produced high energy
output but were prohibitively heavy, and their outputs were
difficult to precisely control. Electrical batteries provided a
lighter alternative but were comparatively underpowered. In
a size that an individual could comfortably wear, they failed
to deliver the juice required to allow soldiers to bound over
apartment buildings or assembly line workers to lift thou-
sand-pound components. For devices that could help the
disabled, however, electric batteries could provide sufficient
power. The field of wearable medical robotics was born, the
powered exoskeleton serving as its poster child.
There were other challenges, such as transferring power◀ Left: “I feel comfortable in the suit,” Daniel says. “But it’s also a
little weird—like driving a car with a slack steering wheel.” ▶ Right:
Daniel's IPG implant and scar. The implant has helped him build
muscle mass for the first time since his crash.P
36 May/June 2020