Japanese quadriplegic partly succeeds in robot-assisted ascent of Swiss mountain

ON THE KLEIN MATTERHORN, Switzerland — A Japanese quadriplegic on Monday partly realized his dream of ascending one of Switzerland's highest mountains, thanks to a friend who carried him up with the help of a high-tech robot suit.

Seiji Uchida, 43, who has been paralyzed from the neck down since a traffic accident more than 20 years ago, failed to reach the summit of the 13,741-foot Breithorn mountain.

But Uchida, who rode piggyback on a friend who was aided by a motorized exoskeleton, said he viewed getting to within 500 yards of the mountaintop as a triumph.

"Today ... I had the same feeling as when I saw the pictures of the Breithorn for the first time: I was overwhelmed," Uchida said after his return to a base station on the Klein Matterhorn.

Uchida said through an interpreter that he was grateful he "had the chance to realize my dreams of climbing it, thanks to the suit."

Uchida and his friend, Takeshi Matsumoto, took a cable car up the Klein Matterhorn, before a three-hour hike toward the Breithorn.

They said they covered about two miles before having to turn back with the steepest stretch remaining because they otherwise would have been too late for the cable car back down the mountain.

Matsumoto carried Uchida with the help of a kind of wearable robot known as HAL, or "Hybrid Assistive Limb," which gave him extra strength.

Uchida and Matsumoto's attempts Saturday and Sunday were called off because of bad weather.

HAL was developed by Tsukuba University engineering professor Yoshiyuki Sankai, who created it to help an operator perform tasks a normal human would not be strong enough for, according to the Web page of Sankai's venture company Cyberdyne.

Using HAL, someone who could normally lift 220 pounds at a leg-press machine could lift 396 pounds, according to Cyberdyne.

The Breithorn is close to the Italian border. The mountain is considered one of the easiest Alpine peaks to climb.