When Tomás Vega SM ’19 was 5 years outdated, he started to stutter. The expertise gave him an appreciation for the adversity that may include a incapacity. It additionally confirmed him the facility of expertise.
“A keyboard and a mouse had been retailers,” Vega says. “They allowed me to be fluent within the issues I did. I used to be in a position to transcend my limitations in a approach, so I grew to become obsessive about human augmentation and with the idea of cyborgs. I additionally gained empathy. I believe all of us have empathy, however we apply it based on our personal experiences.”
Vega has been utilizing expertise to reinforce human capabilities ever since. He started programming when he was 12. In highschool, he helped individuals handle disabilities together with hand impairments and a number of sclerosis. In faculty, first on the College of California at Berkeley after which at MIT, Vega constructed applied sciences that helped individuals with disabilities reside extra independently.
At this time Vega is the co-founder and CEO of Augmental, a startup deploying expertise that lets individuals with motion impairments seamlessly work together with their private computational units.
Augmental’s first product is the MouthPad, which permits customers to manage their laptop, smartphone, or pill by tongue and head actions. The MouthPad’s pressure-sensitive contact pad sits on the roof of the mouth, and, working with a pair of movement sensors, interprets tongue and head gestures into cursor scrolling and clicks in actual time through Bluetooth.
“Now we have an enormous chunk of the mind that’s dedicated to controlling the place of the tongue,” Vega explains. “The tongue contains eight muscular tissues, and a lot of the muscle fibers are slow-twitch, which suggests they don’t fatigue as rapidly. So, I assumed why don’t we leverage all of that?”
Individuals with spinal twine accidents are already utilizing the MouthPad every single day to work together with their favourite units independently. One in all Augmental’s customers, who resides with quadriplegia and finding out math and laptop science in faculty, says the gadget has helped her write math formulation and research within the library — use instances the place different assistive speech-based units weren’t acceptable.
“She will be able to now take notes in school, she will be able to play video games together with her mates, she will be able to watch films or learn books,” Vega says. “She is extra impartial. Her mother instructed us that getting the MouthPad was essentially the most vital second since her harm.”
That’s the final word aim of Augmental: to enhance the accessibility of applied sciences which have develop into an integral a part of our lives.
“We hope that an individual with a extreme impairment will be as competent utilizing a telephone or pill as any individual utilizing their arms,” Vega says.
Making computer systems extra accessible
In 2012, as a first-year scholar at UC Berkeley, Vega met his eventual Augmental co-founder, Corten Singer. That 12 months, he instructed Singer he was decided to affix the Media Lab as a graduate scholar, one thing he achieved 4 years later when he joined the Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces analysis group run by Pattie Maes, MIT’s Germeshausen Professor of Media Arts and Sciences.
“I solely utilized to 1 program for grad college, and that was the Media Lab,” Vega says. “I assumed it was the one place the place I might do what I wished to do, which is augmenting human means.”
On the Media Lab, Vega took lessons in microfabrication, sign processing, and electronics. He additionally developed wearable units to assist individuals entry info on-line, enhance their sleep, and regulate their feelings.
“On the Media Lab, I used to be in a position to apply my engineering and neuroscience background to construct stuff, which is what I like doing essentially the most,” Vega says. “I describe the Media Lab as Disneyland for makers. I used to be in a position to simply play, and to discover with out concern.”
Vega had gravitated towards the concept of a brain-machine interface, however an internship at Neuralink made him search out a special answer.
“A mind implant has the very best potential for serving to individuals sooner or later, however I noticed quite a few limitations that pushed me from engaged on it proper now,” Vega says. “One is the lengthy timeline for improvement. I’ve made so many mates over the previous years that wanted an answer yesterday.”
At MIT, he determined to construct an answer with all of the potential of a mind implant however with out the constraints.
In his final semester at MIT, Vega constructed what he describes as “a lollipop with a bunch of sensors” to check the mouth as a medium for laptop interplay. It labored fantastically.
“At that time, I referred to as Corten, my co-founder, and mentioned, ‘I believe this has the potential to alter so many lives,’” Vega says. “It might additionally change the way in which people work together with computer systems sooner or later.”
Vega used MIT assets together with the Enterprise Mentoring Service, the MIT I-Corps program, and obtained essential early funding from MIT’s E14 Fund. Augmental was formally born when Vega graduated from MIT on the finish of 2019.
Augmental generates every MouthPad design utilizing a 3D mannequin primarily based on a scan of the consumer’s mouth. The workforce then 3-D prints the retainer utilizing dental-grade supplies and provides the digital parts.
With the MouthPad, customers can scroll up, down, left, and proper by sliding their tongue. They will additionally proper click on by doing a sipping gesture and left click on by urgent on their palate. For individuals with much less management of their tongue, bites, clenches, and different gestures can be utilized, and folks with extra neck management can use head-tracking to maneuver the cursor on their display screen.
“Our hope is to create an interface that’s multimodal, so you possibly can select what works for you,” Vega says. “We wish to be accommodating to each situation.”
Scaling the MouthPad
Lots of Augmental’s present customers have spinal twine accidents, with some customers unable to maneuver their arms and others unable to maneuver their heads. Avid gamers and programmers have additionally used the gadget. The corporate’s most frequent customers work together with the MouthPad every single day for as much as 9 hours.
“It’s wonderful as a result of it implies that it has actually seamlessly built-in into their lives, and they’re discovering a lot of worth in our answer,” Vega says.
Augmental is hoping to achieve U.S. Meals and Drug Administration clearance over the following 12 months to assist customers do issues like management wheelchairs and robotic arms. FDA clearance may even unlock insurance coverage reimbursements for customers, which can make the product extra accessible.
Augmental is already engaged on the following model of its system, which can reply to whispers and much more refined actions of inside speech organs.
“That’s essential to our early buyer phase as a result of loads of them have misplaced or have impaired lung operate,” Vega says.
Vega can also be inspired by progress in AI brokers and the {hardware} that goes with them. Irrespective of how the digital world evolves, Vega believes Augmental could be a software that may profit everybody.
“What we hope to supply at some point is an always-available, sturdy, and personal interface to intelligence,” Vega says. “We predict that that is essentially the most expressive, wearable, hands-free working system that people have created.”
