A Japanese man who has been paralysed from the neck down for two decades has fulfilled his dream of ascending the Breithorn mountain in Switzerland – by being carried on the back of his buddy, who was kitted out with a HAL ‘robot-suit’ exoskeleton that increases the strength of its wearer by up to 80%. The HAL’s inventor plans to develop the system further, with the goal of enabling more disabled persons to fulfill ambitions otherwise inaccessible to them. Now this proof-of-concept is loose outside the military domain, we can expect to see a lot more devices like it in the coming years.