High Schoolers Develop Voice-Controlled Wearable Enabling Movement for the Paralyzed Prateek Jose - SnapMunk
go to original December 19, 2016

"How Someone with Paralysis Will Move Again" (Nick Titus)

Myonic Move is a device created by Myonic Technologies, a company that is run by four high school students: Ben Saltz, (CIO), Nate Petersen (CTO) Nick Titus (CEO) and Sam Everett (CFO). The wearable currently focuses on helping paralyzed individuals regain movement in their arms. The Move allows users to raise their shoulders, bend elbows, and close and open hands, down to the level of individual fingers.

“The device uses electrodes coming out of it that stick to the patient’s arm, stimulating any muscle group,” CFO Sam Everett told me. Using voice commands, patients can trigger a series of muscle contractions. The command “grab” allows the user to close their hand, for example. Realizing that some users may not have full control over their faculties of speech due to stroke or traumatic brain injury, the team has been experimenting with alternate modes of input. “We’ve designed the Myonic Move to be very small and easy to put on, and it also has a flexible input system, meaning that the patient can control the device in different ways such as voice control, brain control, or wiggling their toes,” Everett explains.

In fact, the brain-control unit is fully functional and has been tested with paralyzed users.

The team was inspired to create the Myonic Move after observing a market filled with products that didn’t fully cater to the needs of its users. “They’re expensive, clunky, and not effective in mobilizing the user,” Everett says of existing assistive technology designed to aid paralyzed individuals. “That’s why when looking for inspiration we looked to tech from different fields, not already being applied to paralysis.”

In the process, Myonic arrived at a product that’s not just more effective than its competition, but also significantly cheaper. Everett explains that as a result of working on a shoestring budget out of their school’s engineering lab, fully functioning prototypes were built for as little as $100.



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