Hypershell’s kit has been through my hands before, and I wrote up my honest take on it after a trip to IFA last year. Every model in that range has done its assisting from the hip alone. That changes today as Hypershell took to the stage in Berlin at IFA 2026 to unveil Halo.
Hypershell Halo is the company’s new flagship exoskeleton, and the first in its lineup to power the hip and knee joints together rather than the hip on its own. Four motors work across the full leg instead of just the top of it. Hypershell hasn’t confirmed Irish or EU pricing yet, nor a release date for buyers, though Halo will be on the company’s stand for the rest of the show.
There’s a fair bit of engineering behind that change, and some of it is genuinely interesting on paper. Here’s what Hypershell has announced, and where I’d want to see it hold up once a review unit lands.
How Halo’s four motors work as one leg
The core of Halo is what Hypershell calls its Unified Architecture, a continuous carbon fibre structure that runs from hip to thigh to knee to lower leg. The idea is a direct force path rather than separate joints doing their own thing, so all four motors can share the work of propulsion, weight bearing, controlling your descent and cushioning landings.
The hip connection itself has had a redesign too. Hypershell’s new Fish-Spine Adaptive Joint links the hip motor to the leg lever in a way that’s meant to follow your hip’s natural movement rather than locking to a fixed mechanical point, with up to 198 degrees of side-to-side range and 167 degrees front to back. There’s also a new thigh strap, the AeroFlex V, built to redistribute pressure as you stand, sit, squat or cross uneven ground, replacing the rigid rear panel used on earlier models.
HyperIntuition 2.0, the AI behind Halo’s movement predictions
Hypershell’s new motion control system is called HyperIntuition 2.0, and it’s built on what the company describes as a Mixture-of-Experts approach, meaning several specialised neural networks reason together in real time rather than one set of rules trying to cover every scenario. More than 30 sensors feed into it, processed on a dedicated onboard chip.
Hypershell says the system is trained on over 10,000 hours of motion data and can anticipate a wearer’s next move roughly 200 milliseconds ahead, adjusting assistance up to 2,500 times a second. There’s also a learning layer that’s meant to adapt to your own gait, strength and any asymmetry over time. Those are Hypershell’s own figures rather than anything independently tested, and how that plays out for someone with an uneven gait or an old knee injury is exactly the kind of thing only real-world use will answer.
HyperDrive Pro, the power system inside Halo
The new HyperDrive Pro motor system puts out up to 1,490 W of peak power across the leg and supports a maximum assisted speed of 17 km/h. Each knee motor unit has been brought down to 170 g, with a magnesium alloy housing keeping the overall weight in check.
Combined with the unified structure, Hypershell says this lets Halo share braking and load-bearing torque between the hip and knee, which it claims cuts knee-muscle fatigue by up to 40% during squats, on top of helping with climbs and absorbing repeated impact on rough terrain. Power comes from the new PocketVolt battery, a 370 g detachable pack good for up to 20 km of range, small enough to carry at the waist or separately in a backpack.
At 2.6 kg, Halo is built from carbon fibre and titanium and is rated IP54 for dust and light splashing water. It folds down to under 8 litres and is designed to fit inside a backpack, with Hypershell saying it’s compatible with packs up to 85 litres, including mountaineering-sized ones.
Fitting it uses a five-buckle system with stepless adjustment and quick-release levers. Once it’s been set up for your body, Hypershell puts the time to put it back on at around 20 seconds, with removal taking as little as 5.
Shelly, Halo’s AI sidekick
Halo also comes with Shelly, a voice and text assistant Hypershell built specifically for the exoskeleton. It’s meant to handle initial setup, let you personalise how much assistance you get, and help plan routes, learning your movement habits as you go.
None of this comes with a price tag yet, and Hypershell has stayed quiet on exactly when Halo will ship beyond the IFA demo units in Berlin this week. If Hypershell’s track record with its hip-only exoskeletons is any guide, you can expect this to be pretty neat. I remember the feeling of walking with it being slightly underwhelming until I turned it off and realised just how much work an exoskeleton can do quietly for you. In the meantime you can follow the rest of the show through our full IFA Berlin coverage, or head to Hypershell’s own site to register for updates on Halo.
