When Tomás Vega SM ’19 was 5 years old, he began to stutter. The experience gave him an appreciation for the adversity that may include a disability. It also showed him the ability of technology.
“A keyboard and a mouse were outlets,” Vega says. “They allowed me to be fluent within the things I did. I used to be in a position to transcend my limitations in a way, so I became obsessive about human augmentation and with the concept of cyborgs. I also gained empathy. I believe all of us have empathy, but we apply it based on our own experiences.”
Vega has been using technology to enhance human capabilities ever since. He began programming when he was 12. In highschool, he helped people manage disabilities including hand impairments and multiple sclerosis. In college, first on the University of California at Berkeley after which at MIT, Vega built technologies that helped individuals with disabilities live more independently.
Today Vega is the co-founder and CEO of Augmental, a startup deploying technology that lets individuals with movement impairments seamlessly interact with their personal computational devices.
Augmental’s first product is the MouthPad, which allows users to manage their computer, smartphone, or tablet through tongue and head movements. The MouthPad’s pressure-sensitive touch pad sits on the roof of the mouth, and, working with a pair of motion sensors, translates tongue and head gestures into cursor scrolling and clicks in real time via Bluetooth.
“We have now an enormous chunk of the brain that’s dedicated to controlling the position of the tongue,” Vega explains. “The tongue comprises eight muscles, and many of the muscle fibers are slow-twitch, which suggests they don’t fatigue as quickly. So, I believed why don’t we leverage all of that?”
Individuals with spinal cord injuries are already using the MouthPad day-after-day to interact with their favorite devices independently. Considered one of Augmental’s users, who resides with quadriplegia and studying math and computer science in college, says the device has helped her write math formulas and study within the library — use cases where other assistive speech-based devices weren’t appropriate.
“She will be able to now take notes in school, she will be able to play games along with her friends,” Vega says. “She is more independent. Her mom told us that getting the MouthPad was essentially the most significant moment since her injury.”
That’s the final word goal of Augmental: to enhance the accessibility of technologies which have turn into an integral a part of our lives.
“We hope that an individual with a severe hand impairment may be as competent using a phone or tablet as any individual using their hands,” Vega says.
Making computers more accessible
In 2012, as a first-year student at UC Berkeley, Vega met his eventual Augmental co-founder, Corten Singer. That yr, he told Singer he was determined to affix the Media Lab as a graduate student, something he achieved 4 years later when he joined the Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces research group run by Pattie Maes, MIT’s Germeshausen Professor of Media Arts and Sciences.
“I only applied to at least one program for grad school, and that was the Media Lab,” Vega says. “I believed it was the one place where I could do what I desired to do, which is augmenting human ability.”
On the Media Lab, Vega took classes in microfabrication, signal processing, and electronics. He also developed wearable devices to assist people access information online, improve their sleep, and regulate their emotions.
“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 really like doing essentially the most,” Vega says. “I describe the Media Lab as Disneyland for makers. I used to be in a position to just play, and to explore without fear.”
Vega had gravitated toward the concept of a brain-machine interface, but an internship at Neuralink made him hunt down a unique solution.
“A brain implant has the very best potential for helping people in the long run, but I saw quite a few limitations that pushed me from working on it without delay,” Vega says. “One is the long timeline for development. I’ve made so many friends over the past years that needed an answer yesterday.”
At MIT, he decided to construct an answer with all of the potential of a brain implant but without the restrictions.
In his last semester at MIT, Vega built what he describes as “a lollipop with a bunch of sensors” to check the mouth as a medium for computer interaction. It worked beautifully.
“At that time, I called Corten, my co-founder, and said, ‘I believe this has the potential to alter so many lives,’” Vega says. “It could also change the best way humans interact with computers in the long run.”
Vega used MIT resources including the Enterprise Mentoring Service, the MIT I-Corps program, and received crucial early funding from MIT’s E14 Fund. Augmental was officially born when Vega graduated from MIT at the top of 2019.
Augmental generates each MouthPad design using a 3D model based on a scan of the user’s mouth. The team then 3-D prints the retainer using dental-grade materials and adds the electronic components.
With the MouthPad, users can scroll up, down, left, and right by sliding their tongue. They may also right click by doing a sipping gesture and left click by pressing on their palate. For individuals with less control of their tongue, bites, clenches, and other gestures may be used, and folks with more neck control can use head-tracking to maneuver the cursor on their screen.
“Our hope is to create an interface that’s multimodal, so you’ll be able to select what works for you,” Vega says. “We would like to be accommodating to each condition.”
Scaling the MouthPad
A lot of Augmental’s current users have spinal cord injuries, with some users unable to maneuver their hands and others unable to maneuver their heads. Gamers and programmers have also used the device. The corporate’s most frequent users interact with the MouthPad day-after-day for as much as nine hours.
“It’s amazing since it implies that it has really seamlessly integrated into their lives, they usually are finding plenty of value in our solution,” Vega says.
Augmental is hoping to achieve U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance over the following yr to assist users do things like control wheelchairs and robotic arms. FDA clearance may even unlock insurance reimbursements for users, which can make the product more accessible.
Augmental is already working on the following version of its system, which can reply to whispers and much more subtle movements of internal speech organs.
“That’s crucial to our early customer segment because a number of them have lost or have impaired lung function,” Vega says.
Vega can be encouraged by progress in AI agents and the hardware that goes with them. Regardless of how the digital world evolves, Vega believes Augmental is usually a tool that may profit everyone.
“What we hope to offer in the future is an always-available, robust, and personal interface to intelligence,” Vega says. “We expect that that is essentially the most expressive, wearable, hands-free input system that humans have created.”
