Tell us a little about your background and how you became involved with Human in Motion Robotics
I have for the last number of years lived quite the fashionable lifestyle of walking runways and red carpets and traveling around the world with my fashion design company, Chloë Angus Design. I collaborate with indigenous artists to create a made-in-Canada collection and to honor, celebrate and highlight Indigenous art and culture in Canada through fashion. So that was my life until June of, 2015, when I suffered a spinal cord injury.
I went out for a run one afternoon and limped home because my back ached. And I just thought maybe it was because I’ve been working a lot, maybe I pinched a nerve or this is the sciatic pain people talk about. I was experiencing some tingling on my right foot and toes and my right leg stopped working. The same thing happened to my left leg, and it too stopped working. I drove myself to the hospital thinking I’d be back at work in my busy fashionable life, but unfortunately, 24 hours later, both my legs were not working and the best doctors in our country told me that they had found a rare benign tumor inside my spinal cord which caused a bleed into my spinal cord and that bleed, only about 4 drops of blood, caused enough swelling in my spinal cord to pinch off all my nerves below my waist and I became a T10 paraplegic with no use of my legs or most of my functions below my waist. And having the doctor come into my room and tell me in no uncertain terms that I would never walk again! It blew me away, that’s a pretty shocking moment and I just remember thinking, oh no, this isn’t conducive to my lifestyle. This isn’t going to fit with what I do.
The shock of learning about the secondary health complications of living with a spinal cord injury and in particular living in a wheelchair being seated and sedentary, those are a long list of health complications that will shorten my life: pressure sores, muscle atrophy, bone density loss, bladder complications, bladder, circulation, nerve pain, mental health. I mean, the list just goes on and on and that’s what scared me the most about what I was facing. So, I got on Google. I’m an innovative person. I have an engineering mind even though it’s in the fashion industry and I started to search for ways that I could help myself. That’s when I discovered an article in Popular Science Magazine about a new technology called an exoskeleton that was going to help paralyzed people walk again. And I just remember saying to my very distraught husband and my family who were in the hospital room with me, don’t worry, just order me one of these off of Amazon. And I’ll start to work next week, you know? That was a solution that I saw but unfortunately, that was in 2015 and the technology was very new at the time and only really available in research centers—you certainly couldn’t buy one off of Amazon. That at least gave me something to look into, it gave me an idea. So, I continued my journey through the rehab phase and I ended up at DS Strong Rehabilitation Center here in Vancouver. And that’s when I was lucky enough to find one in their rehab center. It was only being used for research and it took much advocating for me to be granted eight sessions to use one of the basic exoskeletons they had in the market at the time. And I just remember that day of you know, getting into this somewhat clunky, somewhat heavy oversized device that took 2 people to get me in it. I had to use arm crutches and a walker to even get up and get moving, but the day that I stood up and walked across the gymnasium floor and just changed that thinking of you said I was never going to walk again but here I am I’m walking. And to me, it didn’t matter whether it was my own or whether it was assisted. I was back up and it was huge. So that really opened my eyes to what was possible with technology.
Unfortunately, by the end of those 8 sessions, I realized that the technology needed to be advanced if it was going to impact the world around me and the ways that I needed to and wanted to. And that seemed simple at the time. We just needed to make it better. How hard could it be, right? So, I continued my search around the world globally from my computer, to find an exoskeleton company that would want me to enthusiastically help them build better access. You can imagine there weren’t very many companies at the time but I did end up hearing about two professors and a group of students here at Simon Fraser University in Surrey and they had a concept, an idea for an advanced exoskeleton.
I couldn’t believe it. It was right in my backyard. I didn’t even have to travel across the world to do this. I was amazed. So, I went out immediately and met with Siamak Arzanpour and Edward Park, the two co-founders of Human in Motion Robotics. At the time they had a basic concept, proof of concept that they and their students had developed, and it was everything I wanted it to be. It was an independent device that I could wear daily and navigate my world. It would be self-balancing and articulate and able to take me through my day. And when I met them, that just spurred me on. And I said, well, you’re going to build it, right? And they said, well, we hope so, that’s the idea. And I just went, well, okay, you know, I run a fashion design company and have experience in branding, marketing, developing products . . .
So, I have stuck with them like glue since then, that was very early January of 2017 and that’s when I joined Human in Motion Robotics to bring them somebody with a spinal cord injury and the perspective of people with lived experience. But to also bring my fashion talents to the table. You know, so many of the medical devices that we have made for us are not made by end users or people with lived experience and certainly not made by fashion designers. So, to bring a creative and lived experience aspect to this has been hugely productive for the team and rewarding for me.
How long have you been involved in the fashion industry?
I like to say I was born into fashion. It’s my first love. It’s my true passion. You know, I build exoskeletons out of necessity, but my true love is in fashion and creative arts. I grew up in a very rural community. Off the grid, no television, no TV, no telephones. I had a small Singer sewing machine that my grandma had given me and I made my Barbie’s first collection. That honestly just grew throughout my life until I launched my company in 2004 here in Vancouver.
Reflecting on your own experiences with the exoskeleton project, what has been the most rewarding aspect for you?
I’m so grateful to the team—to be in the position of the Director of Lived Experience to bring both my design background experience, building things for people that not only do they need but something that they want, and that just comes from listening to your customer. It’s what I’ve always done in fashion and it’s what I bring to the table to Human in Motion. There have been many, many, many rewarding moments, right from the first meeting and being embraced to come onto this team and to the first angel investor round of money we raised and then most recently, you know, a 10-million-dollar funding. These are all incredibly progressive steps that have taken a huge amount of effort on all of our parts and particularly mine too. Educating people about what it’s like to live with a motion disability and why we need to continue to develop technologies that can help us beyond the technologies that we already have. Wheelchairs are a 250-year-old technology that hasn’t been changed much but I think for me that moment when I received the Courage to Come Back award is the most rewarding. That moment of being able to stand up in my exoskeleton and walk to accept that award—it still brings tears to my eyes, but also for my team who worked so hard to make that happen—what a moment. You know, here I am. I’m back and I’m walking.
How do you see the future of exoskeleton technology? Do you think it will become an everyday sight and that wheelchairs will probably become extinct?
Yes, absolutely. I know this is happening. It’s in our very near future and that’s something that I really want to project to your readers. I want them to know that this technology is coming. It’s not very far away. I want them to have hope and be inspired to stay fit and active because you’re all going to be up and walking again one day. I know this technology is coming.
I often speak about this and say that the future of all human motion, whether able or disabled is going to be in wearable robotics. And that’s whether you’re lifting a heavy box in a warehouse or you’re like me who needs assistance now. I hate to remind everyone that they’re all going to age in their lifetime and end up with a motion disability themselves. So, you’re going to want us to build this. And I know that that’s the future of human mobility. Our health authorities, healthcare providers and insurance providers will adopt, incorporate and pay for this technology. It’s really an important piece of the puzzle for people with disabilities to be able to have access to this type of technology.
Having exoskeletons is our first stage, then we’re going into rehabilitation centers in the next year and then continuing our development until we have devices for everybody for everyday use. Having these devices will provide a gold standard of care for people with motion disability that we’ve never seen before. And we really need the adoption by healthcare providers and insurers. My hope is that they will step up. There is a global trend towards coverage for exoskeletons by healthcare providers and insurance companies. Germany has been covering the cost of exoskeletons for their people who need them for a number of years now. The U.S. has recently implemented an insurance code for exoskeletons and I believe has an amount that goes towards devices like this for the people who need them. I think that’s a great beginning step that we can build on, but here in Canada, we’re not as quick to adopt the latest technologies and to incorporate them into our health care. We really need to change that. Canada should be a leader in having a gold standard of care for people with disabilities. We have the ability to do that. I think we just have to get them to adopt that idea. I work with the Rick Hansen Foundation, the Praxis Spinal Cord Institute and the Health Standards Organization of Canada to create a gold standard of care for spinal cord injury and people with disability in Canada, something that we can really shine a light on and have others follow.
How does your exoskeleton differentiate itself from similar devices on the market?
It’s important to explain to people where exoskeleton technology is at right now. I think a lot of people have not heard about it at all or if they’ve gotten a chance to try it, it’s been very limited. To date, we’re still in that early stage where the exoskeletons only move forward in a very robotic way without really having a natural human gait—they only get you standing up and walking forward. They don’t have any support for balance, so, they’re very unstable. You have to use arm crutches or a walker to stay upright in them. That takes quite a bit of upper body strength and it’s very limiting just from a physical standpoint. But they are also still very much only in rehab centers, we’re certainly not at a point where that technology has been able to get people outdoors.
It’s a huge step forward for Human in Motion. The exoskeleton they’ve designed and developed is self-balancing. No more arm crutches, no more walkers, no more upper body strength restrictions. It’s completely self-balancing. This is an incredible move forward for exoskeleton technology. We’ve also built it in a way that I can get into it myself. It sits down beside me and I could transfer into it independently. I can put on all my orthotic straps to hold me in. When I stand up, I control it myself. I can be at eye level with my peers and hold a conversation with my colleagues. It has incredibly articulate motion, it works in all directions. It has a natural human walking gait. I can turn in place, I can do tiny step adjustments, I can do speed walking, I can turn on a curve to avoid obstacles. I can crouch down to pick up something I dropped. It is capable of slopes and stairs. In my travels and certainly after my spinal cord injury, I’m realizing how many stairs and barriers there all, either architecturally or simply by environment. And I thought, I can’t make all of the stairs in thousands of years of architecture flat and I can’t flatten the mountains and valleys but what I can do is build a better vehicle to get me there. So, I took that idea to the team and they said, okay, let’s do this. And so, our device is light years ahead in this area. It’s a radical improvement to the current technology.
We’re looking now at a future for wheelchair users that is totally different. Since having a spinal cord injury, I dove into the world of universal design, which is something we should all learn more about early stages and moving forward because we can build better spaces with knowledge and inclusion that can help everyone. But we’re still going to have mountains. We’re still going to have valleys and we’re still going to need people to be up and active and healthy. These are all things that exoskeletons will be able to tackle and provide this level of assistance for people in their everyday life as we move forward.
When do you anticipate the first batch of people will be able to use it outside of a rehab center?
We’ve built this incredible device and we are in the stages of going through our Health Canada approvals and clinical trials and all the good things that will set us up for success when we go to market. Our initial market will be in the rehab setting. My push behind it was that we have the most advanced piece of rehabilitation technology available to people right now at the rehab centers, and then we have the potential and the opportunity to offer a real change to the potential of rehabilitation and what their outcomes could be. This is an early part of our development, but also an instrumental one just to get it to people who can start using it now. Even if it’s in rehab centers. This is where we will start. This also gives us an opportunity to gather more information from a diverse group of people and to have that information come back to our team so that when we come out with our personal device, it is everything we imagined it would be, everything users not just need it to be, but want it to be. That’s the stage we’re at now and we will be going into rehab centers within the next year, which is really exciting. But ultimately our team’s goal is to build an exoskeleton for everyday use and we’re fully committed to doing that. The investors that we have are committed to that and we will continue that journey.
We have our first research group of about 20 users at a Toronto rehab right now and it’s the first time our exoskeleton has gone outside of our lab to another group of users besides myself and our focus group teams that I work with at Human in Motion. They will have the chance to experience what it’s like to have the freedom of movement and independence back again. The device is not clunky. Its motions are smooth and quiet and fast and responsive to whatever I want it to do. And the interesting thing at this stage that we’re at is that this design has been built in a typically Canadian way, which is on pennies and passion. We put all of our time, effort and money into focusing on making the device itself—building the outside structure with the capabilities to then apply the technology, programming and movement that we want into it.
It is fully self-balancing, the weight of it doesn’t impact the user at all whether it’s a clinician or personal user, and nobody has to lift their exoskeleton. It walks beside me on its own. It sits down beside me. It lifts my weight; I never feel the weight of the exoskeleton itself. For our current market, the size and weight that we’re at, this has no impact to the user at all in this case. But as we continue to the development of a personal device, we will be looking at advanced materials and incorporating those things into it. The device will only get lighter and faster.
Inspiring people—that’s been my biggest thing. I was told during my injury to just accept this and go and learn to live my life in a wheelchair and every time I pushed back it was met with well are you not accepting your injury, and I had to fight really hard. But I don’t know anybody who’s ever overdosed on too much hope, right? Hope gives you energy and inspiration. Maybe go and do something about it or at the very least, know that it’s coming along and keep yourself healthy because it’s not just a life of acceptance, you know? I have learned to accept my life. I know how to use my wheelchair. I’m back in my work life. I drive a car, I can travel independently. I’ve accepted and adapted to all of these things. But it’s still not enough for me. Knowing that there’s something that we could build. All of these secondary health complications that are so terrible for people to live with, it just never seemed right to me that it was just you’re never going to walk again—accept it! Now, building the exoskeleton, and hearing that statement that you will never walk again is simply untrue. It’s not a true statement anymore. You very well could walk again but in different applications.
Current users of the exoskeleton
We have our outside group with the Toronto rehab, which is just a great program going on there, but we also have a group of users internally and one that we worked with from the Praxis Institute. We have people with different levels of injury and diverse injuries to give input. That’s been really important.
We’ve had a number of those focus group use the exoskeleton and every time someone gets into it, it’s such a joy to see them experience what I get to experience every day by using the exoskeleton and the smile that’s on their face! We had a young man who has been injured for 20 years and never even tried to stand up and walk in more than 8 years and we brought him to the lab and he was able to learn how to use the exoskeleton in about 10 minutes—get into the exoskeleton independently, stand up and start walking and his family was there that day and the look on all of their faces was such a joy! The exoskeleton is very easy to use. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been a long-term, wheelchair user, our device is well-built, it’s comfortable, safe and certainly brings smiles and tears to the faces of everyone who uses it and their families. They want their loved ones to see them upright and be able to make eye contact again. Hugging my husband to my chest—that was huge for me. So many people just aren’t aware of the social separation of being in a wheelchair, you’re down there, at a different level. Human beings communicate at eye level and everything outside of that is not seen or really heard and it’s not that people don’t want to, but it is difficult. You’ll get sore from looking up. They’ll get sore from kneeling down. It’s really quite difficult and it’s hard to get a good hug. When I’m in my exoskeleton, I’m without a walker, without arm crutches, people have access to me again and physically hugging people is really beautiful.
Chloë, the fashion designer
I grew up in a rural community with the little sewing machine doing my Barbie collections. I continued my education in Vancouver and when I completed it, I was approached by the Canadian by Design department at The Bay, downtown Vancouver, who had seen some things that I had made. They were the first ones to launch my collection in 2004 which was a pretty good place to take off from.
I always had a focus on sustainability. I come from a family that has an organic farming background and it was important for me to bring this idea of sustainability into fashion, which was challenging at the time. Fashion is one of the most polluting industries in the world and with my organic background, it was a challenge for me. I knew I wanted to make my fashion sustainable—environmentally and economically. Incrementally I started making things out of fabrics that are natural or innovative so that they’re better for our environment in the way that they’re produced. For instance, using shell buttons instead of plastic. Then moving into, I think the idea of economic sustainability of making a line in Canada. Having a collection that was entirely made here was rare then and is even more rare now. And then of course in the idea of sustainable body image, that was really, really important for me. I came into the fashion industry seeing only models that were six feet tall, size two, 18 and predominantly white but that wasn’t the vision I had for my line or what I thought was acceptable for people. I wanted to create something much more inclusive and making sure that I was using people of all ages
sizes, shapes, that sort of thing was incredibly important to me. I’ve always really tried to incorporate all people in my presentations, runway shows and advertising. It was becoming so obvious to me once I got into doing men’s wear that unisex clothing was necessary. We were doing men’s here and women’s there and I thought, can’t we just be unisex? Do we need titles in fashion? I mean, you just don’t. Fashion is a place where people for a long time have been free to express themselves and I have sold dresses to six-foot-tall gentlemen and I’ve sold suits to five-foot-tall ladies and I’m in a place where it’s just made sense to me to have a clothing store, not a men’s store, not a women’s store, just a clothing store. That’s how I built out my company and then of course where I grew up was a predominantly indigenous community. I feel privileged to have grown up amongst our First Nations people and to have the insight of the incredible knowledge and culture that they uphold.
When I moved to Vancouver, I realized that there was quite a separation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. I wanted to create a fashion line where I could collaborate with Indigenous artists that would allow us to bring people together to celebrate, to learn more and as difficult as sometimes it may be, to uplift, uphold and celebrate Indigenous art and culture. That led to the expansion of the company and to the Spirit Collection, which is being so well received by all. My customer base is diverse and inclusive of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and then of course, moving forward into my spinal cord injury, we’re also now working in accessible fashion and seeing how we can make some impact and change there.
How is your fashion background connected to building exoskeletons?
The exoskeleton came about out of necessity, but at the same time, it’s not far off from making fashion. It’s something that people wear, it needs to fit a body. I have a lot of experience with a wide range of body types so I could bring that to the team. And when we were building the orthotic—the pieces that hold people into the exoskeleton, I was able to collaborate with a number of different people who worked in prosthetics. Exoskeletons have actually come with warnings on them that they will damage skin and ‘we advise you protect against it.’ And I thought, no, no, we have to build better orthotics so that you can get in them and not only be safe but look good too. So certainly my design background ties into the design and development of the orthotic components that hold me into the exoskeleton. It’s incredibly comfortable. I can wear it for hours at a time with not even a hint of skin damage. In the future, I see our exoskeleton coming in custom colors with custom and indigenous art prints. There’s more to medical equipment than blues. We can make a colorful world of products for people who live with disabilities. I’ve got customers, not patients and I think more companies who design and develop products for people with disabilities should really think of them as customers and should want options, colors and opportunities to be unique.
That’s been a really important part of it—coming in and helping the team design a wearable robotic that looks pretty good. People are starting to realize that and it shows that fashion is such an important part of people. It’s how we first present ourselves. It’s how people first read us when they see us and that’s why it was so hard for me in the beginning of my injury when I was in rehab hospital to be faced with what I was wearing—Velcro shoes, sweatpants and T-shirts. This is great for Sunday mornings, but my life in this just seemed really bleak. I’m lucky I had a fashion design studio so I went back and said to my team, hey, you got to make me some stuff. I was pleasantly surprised that a lot of my line, without knowing it at the time when I designed it, does work for adaptive clothing. A lot of pieces transformed to me and now I can offer them to my other friends in wheelchairs. It really does work for me. I already used great soft fabrics, didn’t like a lot of clips and buckles—I don’t like uncomfortable clothing, I like fashionable clothing but I don’t like to be uncomfortable. So that was always a bit of my aesthetic anyway and I was pleasantly surprised to have a line and a place that I could go to get dressed, but it certainly has changed my perspective.
But there were a few important things we needed to design and develop right away for me and it was a rain jacket. I think I spent my whole first year wet before designing the rain jacket. It rains so much in Vancouver and as soon as you’re outside seated in the rain, you’re immediately soaking wet. When you’re standing, you’re upright and maybe your head and a bit of your shoulder will get wet. But when you’re seated in a chair, your legs are wet, your cushion is wet, your back is wet. I came out with a rain jacket the year that I got paralyzed and I’ve been working on it for a couple of years to make it perfect. It was a three-quarter length jacket and I was so disappointed that it came out when I was in a wheelchair and that couldn’t work for me. So, my team and I got back together and we adapted the jacket to be shorter in the back and longer in front and to have a different closure. It worked really well and I’m happy to have it now. I’m not wet anymore. In the next couple of weeks, I will be coming out with the lap rain jacket which is very simple. The rain in Vancouver starts and stops on the drop of a hat so it’s something that just can be rolled up really simply, unisex design, two sizes that kind of fit everybody. It’s just a really simple rain jacket that goes over your lap, comfy and a bit padded and ultimately it keeps the rain off and allows you to go about your day.
I’m in fashion, I go to fashionable parties. I wear tall boots and pretty blouses and there wasn’t a lot out there for me. Sort of just outdoor gear that was being adapted or I was just making whatever’s there work for me. I have a beautiful leather glove collection, one I got from my granny because she always wore gloves. I had inherited her glove collection before my injury, and when I got injured I saw people out in their wheelchairs in the rehab center and they were wearing gardening gloves and mountain biking gloves and I was thinking, aha, I’m getting my granny’s glove collection out because I’m not going to be caught dead in these that are for gardening—which I love—but not when I’m off to a fashion meeting, thank you very much. So, learning how to incorporate some of what I have, and also being able to adapt clothing and still be elegant but keeping it at a price point that people can afford, that’s been the target of my line. Make it sustainable using the best materials I can, make it adaptable and still make it affordable. It’s certainly a tall order, but not impossible. And clothing, of course, does a lot for your self-esteem. There’s a huge amount of confidence that comes from how you present yourself and what you wear. A person can completely change how they feel by what they’re wearing.
There isn’t a big enough focus on fashion during rehabilitation in the early phase of injury or even after, helping people with adaptable fashion and seeing it as an important part of recovery. But people need allowances for this because having to replace your entire wardrobe is expensive. Lots of people can’t do it. Having some sort of allowance or having it covered by healthcare is not just a want, but an actual need. It’s not just being frivolous; it is actually helping that person recover in a massive way. Get them out socially, get them back out to work. It’s a really important part of this. And I’ve also been working with a group on a project. We’ve done a big survey across Canada on the needs of fashion with spinal cord injury and wheelchair users and other diversities. Trying to figure out how we can help and make patterns that may be universal and could be shared. We’ve been going to spinal cord injury conferences and talking about the need to understand how important fashion and adaptable fashion is and including that in the conversation as part of recovery.
I’ve been bringing people’s attention to the fact that a lot is going on in research around global warming and the impact on people with disabilities and for people with neurological disorders in particular how temperature is very hard to control. You’re either way too hot or way too cold. Researchers and the medical community are starting to look at the impact of global warming and heat in particular, changing temperatures and how to mitigate the risk that they foresee coming. A lot of that is in clothing. Unfortunately, a lot of people with a disability live below the poverty line and are certainly tight to the table because of the massive costs of caring for yourself with these things. When you’re buying inexpensive or cheaper clothing, it tends to be made from fabrics that are not very good, they don’t allow your skin to breathe so a lot of people are just in the wrong clothing and that clothing is going to have a major impact on the health and wellbeing of people because of global warming.
Do you only do fashion and designs of Indigenous culture or do you work with others as well?
I have others as well. The line has certainly been a pretty diverse balance of Indigenous design and other clothing. I’ve always wanted to have a collection that helps people build their wardrobe. When you buy my collection, it’s meant to last. It has fairly classic design style to it and it has art. Head to toe, our components are all different sort of chaotic designs coming together. And we have expanded. I started out in women’s wear but this changed since the royal couple came to visit in 2016. I had the incredible opportunity to work with the chief of the Heiltsuk Nation, Bella Bella, Marianne Slett, she was a customer of mine at the time and she heard that her community was going to be having a visit from Prince William and Princess Kate. They were planning a traditional gifting ceremony and she got a hold of me right away and said, you know, I want you to work with one of our artists to create a spirit collection for Kate for a gifting ceremony, but we need something to gift Prince William, what could you do? And I said, oh my goodness, what am I going to do? I only did women’s wear at the time. I got together with their artist, KC Hall, who’s an incredibly talented young man from the Heiltsuk Nation and he provided the design called the Great Bear Rainforest. We made a beautiful spirit wrap and then we ended up creating the spirit blanket which was a blanket design that could be gifted to William because you can give a blanket to anyone. So that was actually the launch of our home decor line which quickly grew from there.
Success stories
The royal visit. That was incredible to see, on the front page of the Vancouver Sun, Kate wearing my wrap and William wearing the blanket over his shoulders. It was really a proud moment and it also feels like we’re doing something about reconciliation. I was proud, as a non-indigenous person, to work with KC Hall and to use this opportunity to support, uplift and help Indigenous people to be seen, heard and remembered.
Upcoming projects?
We recently launched our lap jacket but check back in Spring to see what we’re up to.
“Ultimately, I look forward to the day, and I’m planning it already, where I will have a runway show and all of the models will be wearing exoskeletons.” ~ Chloè Angus