Quadriplegic Veteran’s Robotic Exoskeleton Gave Her ‘a Beautiful Life’ — Now She Works to Get Them to More Vets

A car accident left Marine Corps veteran Brittany Elliott a quadriplegic eight years ago, but with the help of technology and her own determination, she’s walking again, thanks to a robotic exoskeleton.

Now she’s telling her story to lawmakers in Washington, DC, working alongside other veterans to help create the STAND Act, a bill announced last week that will make these exoskeletons easier to access for other disabled veterans who need them.

“My mission is to spread awareness about this device,” says Elliott, 33, who lives in Red Boiling Springs, Tenn. with his father. “It’s not science fiction – it’s real life. Getting back on your feet and moving brings a lot more to the table than just walking.”

Elliott was attending a weapons training course one Saturday in February 2013, where a Marine saw her shooting and asked her what she did for a living and if she was thinking about joining the military. He sent a recruiter to a Wal-Mart in Lenoir City, Tenn., where she worked as a pharmacy technician, and that Friday she enlisted in the Marine Corps.

Six months later, Brittany was medically discharged after breaking her right femur in a training accident. She was told it would take two years for her leg to heal, after which she plans to re-enlist.

“I was counting down the days,” she says. “All I wanted to do was get back into service. I really found what I felt was my place.” She trained for her physical performance and combat readiness testing, she says, “to prove that I was fit to return to duty.”

Brittany Elliott in Washington, DC

Courtesy of the Elliott family

About a month before she became eligible for the physical fitness test, on July 3, 2015, she was driving a car with her then-girlfriend and some friends in it when “a drunk driver ran a red light and hit us head-on,” she says.

“I knew at that moment that my ability to return to any branch of service was gone forever,” she says. “I had no idea what I was going to do. ”

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Brittany Elliott in the hospital.

Courtesy of the Elliott family

In addition to the neck injury and concussion, Brittany suffered a spinal cord injury that left her a quadriplegic.

“I lost the ability to do everything,” she says.

She watched the Fourth of July fireworks from her hospital bed. A week later, she turned 25 in intensive care.

On the Internet, she read about the robotic exoskeleton ReWalk, which enables quadriplegics to walk. She saw that the VA was doing a study.

“I pestered and pestered people until I got into the study,” she says. She traveled to the VA hospital in St Louis, Mo. in April 2018, where she was fitted with the device and wore it home for 12 weeks. She loved it.

“It allows me to walk,” she says. It can even climb stairs.

Brittany Elliott at the National Wheelchair Games.

Kristi Koehler of ReWalk Robotics for Image 2 at the National Wheelchair Games.

When she’s in a wheelchair, Elliott says, people tend to ignore her or ask her father directly, “What’s wrong with her?”

“It’s like they think it’s contagious,” she says. “My chair is my legs, but that doesn’t define me. That’s how I walk. But when I’m in the exoskeleton, people will talk to me. They are not afraid of him – despite the fact that he sounds like a robot.”

The difference in how people treated her led to an improvement in her mental health as well as her physical health; her bone density and bladder control improved and she lost weight.

But then she had to return it.

“It was very cruel,” says her father, Morgan Elliott, a former truck driver who is now her full-time caregiver.

Brittany spent years fighting for her own personal exoskeleton. She finally did in April 2022.

“No veteran should ever have to fight the battle I fought to get this technology,” she says. “Would you want to fight for four years to get something that changed your life so much?”

Brittany Elliott in her robotic exoskeleton.

Courtesy of the Elliott family

She wears the exoskeleton to public places, from Disney to Disabled American Veterans meetings to the Congressional Football Game. Elliott likes to go to places where there will be a lot of other disabled veterans who have lost the ability to walk, to show them technology and offer hope.

“Some people don’t even know it’s possible,” she says. “They just made peace with the chair. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”

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Her father – who is always by her side – has seen a significant difference in his daughter when she is in her ReWalk.

“It’s life-changing. It really is,” says her dad. “When he’s in his device and we’re out, he doesn’t want to stop. She just wants to go. She likes to be awake, she likes to walk… She’s happier when she’s in her device and walking in her device. Her whole aura changes.”

When he first saw it, he thought of Robocop, he says. People come up to her and tell her that she looks like a real transformer.

Despite her injuries, Brittany continues to live an active life. She and her father recently went parasailing together in Hawaii and swam with sea turtles together in Aruba.

“I don’t usually spend a lot of time in the house,” she says. “I usually help my fellow vets.”

She learned to drive; engages in adaptive skiing and trains snow skiing; she drives snowmobiles and skydives.

Brittany Elliott on a snowmobile.

Courtesy of the Elliott family

“I live a beautiful life,” she says. “The wreck may have changed my life, but it didn’t end it. It taught me what things are really important. I knew I could give up and die, or I could make life an amazing adventure.”

And she chose the latter.

“It’s just begun,” she says. “It’s getting better every day.”

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Source: HIS Education