Honda Walking Assist Device price & specs

Honda (Japan) Honda Walking Assist Device (1)

Lease only, ended (~$300 per month, ¥45,000)Never sold outright. From November 2015 Honda leased it to Japanese hospitals and rehabilitation facilities at about ¥45,000 per month on 36-month terms (unconfirmed exact figure). Honda stopped handling the device at the end of 2023.

Discontinued · unavailableButtons onlyHip exoskeleton2.7 kgStroke gait trainingDiscontinued

UnavailableDiscontinued. Honda stopped leasing and supporting the device at the end of 2023, and OG Giken only services units already in Japanese hospitals. It was never sold to individuals.

Control: Not possible outside the clinic set-up, and the device is no longer supported by Honda.

Official page (hand-over notice) ↗Exoskeleton Report profile ↗FDA-cleared exoskeletons list (Exoskeleton Report) ↗

Overview

Honda began walking-assist research in 1999 alongside its ASIMO humanoid work, and the resulting 2.7 kg hip device became one of the first powered exoskeletons to reach hospitals. It was never a consumer product. From November 2015 Honda leased it to Japanese hospitals and rehab centres for gait training after stroke, it gained a CE mark in 2018 (unconfirmed) and an FDA 510(k) listing for stroke patients walking at least 0.4 m/s in rehabilitation institutes, yet it was never launched in the US. Honda ended all handling of the product on 2023-12-31 and handed support for existing units to OG Giken's Physibo support centre from January 2024, so the official page is now just a hand-over notice and no new units are available anywhere. It sits in this guide as the ancestor of today's consumer hip exoskeletons such as the Hypershell X, while the clinic role has passed to devices like Cyberdyne's HAL and EksoNR.

Specifications

Category	Exoskeletons & exosuits · Consumer & outdoor
Released	2015
Country	Japan
Availability	Discontinued · unavailable
Programmability	No programmability
Built-in autonomy	Reactive · Responds to its surroundings without a map, such as avoiding obstacles or following a person
LLM support	None · No voice assistant or LLM.
Best for	Ages 18+ (estimated)
Vision sensors	No vision sensors
Actuators	Brushless / direct-drive motors
Audio	No audio
Compute type	Proprietary / undisclosed
Control	Buttons only
Weight	2.7 kg
Assistance	Small motors at each hip add force to swing the legs with every step, aiming to even out the timing of left and right steps and lengthen stride, based on Honda's inverted-pendulum model of walking. Torque figures were not published.
Joints	Hips
Battery & runtime	Rechargeable battery in the hip unit, capacity and runtime not published.
Operation	Therapist-controlled gait training in a clinic. Control interface details are not published (unconfirmed).
Sensors	Hip angle sensors on each side.
Compute	Not published
SDK	None