Augmental Technologies

My name is Tomás Vega, I was born and raised in Perú and I want to be a cyborg. I studied Computer and Cognitive Science at UC Berkeley where I did research in human-computer interaction and worked in assistive technology projects. I then went to the MIT Media Lab for my masters where I worked on invisible interfaces for hands-free interaction, for both the able-bodied and people living with impaired hand control. I have interned at Apple, Augmented Human Lab and Neuralink. After my masters, I founded a company that has as a mission enable people with severe impaired hand control to control computers using tongue and jaw-teeth gestures.

1) Helping people living with severe hand impairment to control computers with tongue and jaw-teeth gestures. 2) A smart teeth retainer with a trackpad on the palate and other sensors to enable this interaction. 3) Allow people with severe impaired hand control to gain independence, empower them, and enable them to join back into the workforce and become productive members of society.

The problem we are trying to solve is providing intuitive, discreet, and high-bandwidth access to computers for people with severe hand impairment. The goal is to empower them to achieve their dreams, live a fulfilling life, and possibly get back to the workforce. If we take into consideration conditions such as tetraplegia, amputation, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, spina bifida, between others, there are over ~2 million people with impaired hand control in the US. If we extrapolate these numbers to a global scale, there are ~62.7 million people living with hand constraints.

We are making a mouth mouse: a discreet, wireless, smart teeth-retainer that allows for control of computers with intuitive tongue and jaw-teeth gestures. It has a trackpad on the roof of the mouth (palate) that detects tongue position and other sensors to sense jaw-teeth and suction gestures. This could connect not only to computers but also connected devices around their homes to provide independent control of their lives.

The project serves people living with impaired hand control. We are working with disability communities in the Bay Area (CA) and locally with Boston rehabilitation clinics. We have worked for over 5 years with this population and keep them involved throughout the show iteration process. We make sure we use all our resources to focus on what they need and want.

We are working on an interface that empower people with severe disabilities, who are traditionally left behind as "hopeless", by providing them an opportunity to live independently and reintegrate themselves into society and become productive members that don't conform with their biological limitations, but use technology to go beyond and live the most fulfills lives they can. No one can stop them.

I have been working with people with disabilities since my second year of undergraduate. I realized there are so many low hanging fruits that could enable them to be more independent. I then came to the MIT Media Lab where I worked on hands-free interfaces for people with situational and chronic impairment. After finishing my masters, I realized I wanted to devote my life to helping this underserved population. The idea of using the tongue came from my thesis, that focused on using jaw-teeth gestures. I realized the the jaw, although useful for gestures, is limited, and that the tongue has much more dexterity. That's when I came up with the concept of the mouth mouse.

When I was five years old I began stuttering and haven’t stopped since. Throughout my life I have tried countless psychological and speech therapies, electronic devices, and even medications to improve my fluency. Some of these helped, to some extent, but I haven’t found any long-term solutions.

This life has provided me with empathy to understand to some extent what people with disabilities feel. I know I can make a change. It is up to the people with heterogeneous life experiences to bridge the gaps that make life that much more difficult. 

I studied Computer and Cognitive Science at UC Berkeley, where I won numerous hackathons in assistive technology and was deeply engaged with the assistive tech community. I worked two summers at the Siri Advanced Development Group at Apple, where I filed multiple patents and demoed to VPs, and one summer at Neuralink, developing implantable high-bandwidth brain-computer interfaces. I did his Masters at the MIT Media Lab, where I developed miniaturized sensors for microgestures, allowing for new types of hands-free human computer interaction. One of the main use cases focused on using my technology to enable people with ALS to communicate using jaw gestures.

As undergraduate, he was involved in countless projects in the area of assistive technology. I had the privilege to be exposed to extraordinary individuals who, despite having severe motor limitations, gifted me with genuine smiles and showed us that happiness is an option regardless of your condition. These people helped me to appreciate my abilities and knowledge, so I dedicated my weekends to creating devices that enabled my friends to have more independent lives.

I have the passion, motivation, empathy, and technical expertise in order to tackle this problem. I am excited to solve it.

When I was 15 years old I went on a school trip to the Amazon Jungle. I ended up lost in one of the field trips and spent 12 hours and a half by myself during the night. What I experienced cannot be expressed with words, but I can say my life changed. It changed me because I was exposed to one of the most intense possible things someone can experience. I learned about how everything is relative, and sometimes when I feel everything is burning down, I still have shelter, food, light and water to keep me safe. I learned that no matter how hard things can get, in the end it's not that bad. That night I was reborn, I felt I was given an opportunity to live my life at its fullest, to overcome challenges and make my existence in this world meaningful. I believe I was placed in this earth to guide the development of human augmentation, starting with assistive technology, and beyond.

After finishing interning at Siri Advanced Development Group at Apple, I devoted a week to one of my most rewarding projects. I led a team of fellow hackers in a week-long makeathon for my friend Daniel Stickney who has cerebral palsy and cortical vision impairment. We immersed ourselves in his home, identifying daily challenges and coming up with creative solutions, with the aim of preventing injury and promoting independence. For the first 3 days, we conducted experiments to quantify his cognitive, motor and sensory capabilities. We discovered his biggest challenge was navigation in new environments where he had no spatial memories. We hacked his wheelchair to add ramp lateral edge detection, frontal drop-off detection, and backing assistance through multi-modal feedback. We then developed the technology further in order to ensure the quality and robustness of the system. We wanted to develop easy-to-install open-source kits that people can customize according to their own specifications and needs. We hoped that the community empowered by this initiative will create adaptations for other wheelchair models, fostering an open digital repository of wheelchair add-ons to compensate for different visual and motor limitations. We won the Lemelson-MIT student prize for the category "Drive it".