Jonjo Bright, a jockey based in Ireland, was sure that he wouldn't be able to walk again when he became paralyzed from the neck down due to an accident in March 2013.

He was delightfully proven wrong, however, when he wore a "bionic suit" from Ekso Bionics. The suit, or a powered exoskeleton, allowed Bright to walk and move.

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"I didn't think I would be able to use it because I'm quite a high level injury, so when I began to walk it was a great feeling," Bright said. "It felt very natural, not robotic like you would think."

Ekso's bionic suit comes with three levels of operation for the mobility-challenged. In the one operation, a therapist controls each step by the push of a button.

In the second, the patient controls his steps as he pushes the button himself. In the last operation, there are no buttons involved and the suit is actuated according to shifting in the weight of the patient.

Ekso CEO Nathan Harding calls the bionic suit a human exoskeleton or a wearable robot. Exoskeletons, which are popular in science fictions books and movies such "The Iron Man", are now coming to market and are taking the science and medical spheres to whole new levels.

The Esko suit grew out of the company's work on the HULC project with U.S. Army. The HULC project, where HULC stands for Human Universal Load Carrier, involves a machine that helps soldiers to carry loads as heavy as 200 pounds without any risk of injury.

TagsEkso suit, Exoskeleton