Assistive Technology Development has developed the Reflex wearable robot for rehabilitation. Source: ATDev
The time is right to apply robotics and artificial intelligence to mobility and manipulation challenges, according to the founders of Assistive Technology Development Inc., or ATDev. The company is working on the next generation of systems to help people with rehabilitation and daily life.
ATDev co-founders Owen Kent and Todd Roberts met as roommates at the University of California, Berkeley.
“I came to find out I was actually mentoring an engineering course designing for the human body that Todd was taking as part of his master’s program in exoskeleton design and mechanical engineering. So that was pretty serendipitous. And then I came to find out that we really shared a lot of similar passions for building assistive technology,” recalled Kent. “I’ve been a wheelchair user my whole life. I have a type of muscular dystrophy, and it’s a necessity rather than invention.”
Their idea of using robotics for physical therapy began as a class project and turned into a company with research funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
“We got our first venture capital check in 2022 from UC Berkeley’s Skydeck program. It’s sort of a modified version of the Y Combinator program that Berkeley runs,” said Roberts. “They cut us a $200,000 check that let us get a little bit more money into developing some prototypes directly in line with what we wanted to build with Reflex.”
“And then in 2023, we closed our pre-seed round with some investment from a small hardware-focused VC firm based out of Orange County called Solutions,” he added. “We were in their lab space for the last almost three years and raised a seed round back in 2025 that aligned with our U.S. launch of the Reflex product.”
Reflex provides consistent rehab help
Reflex is a robotic device that straps on to a user’s leg for orthopedic knee rehabilitation. Weighing less than 5 lb. (2.2 kg), it includes sensors for remote monitoring and guided exercises. This allows for more sustained use than sessions with a human therapist, said ATDev.
“This isn’t a tool to replace physical therapists; this is a tool to make them 10x more effective,” said Kent.
ATDev has already proven that a physical therapy device can obtain insurance reimbursements, and it plans to show that its systems can provide support over longer timeframes.
The Orange, Calif.-based company works with NVIDIA, Amazon Web Services, Kinova Robotics, and LUCI Mobility. It also has partnerships with the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, Northeastern University, and Purdue University.
RAAMP program provides ATDev funding
In November, ATDev announced that it was a subcontractor in the Robotic Assistive Mobility and Manipulation Platform (RAMMP) program. The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) had awarded up to $41 million to the University of Pittsburgh for the program.
RAMMP aims to create a new generation of open-source robotic technologies to provide mobility and manipulation assistance to people with disabilities so they can live more independently.
ARPA-H was modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as part of the Biden administration’s “cancer moonshot,” noted Roberts. ATDev submitted its proposal to address the difficult problems of totally autonomous navigation and safe feeding for people with quadriplegia in April 2024.
Getting federal funding can be a challenge with the change of administrations, Roberts acknowledged, but in early 2025, “the new administration picked up the baton and said, hey, we really like this. We wanna support our veteran community primarily through this technology, but [also] the aging population more broadly.”
“There was a bunch of negotiations over the summer, because it’s not a traditional grant where you write the proposal, and they say yes or no, and then you go do it. It’s a contract for the government,” he said. “So you’re negotiating milestones, you’re negotiating total amount of funding, you’re negotiating intellectual property rights. And then finally, that all got over the finish line on the last possible day of the 2025 fiscal year. So Sept. 25, it was signed by the government, and we were greenlit before the shutdown. We kicked the project off in October and are off and rolling.”
The RAMMP team at the press conference announcing its ARPA-H award. Source: ATDev
Robotic wheelchair developer gives users a seat at the table
Most powered wheelchair users are stuck with decades-old technology, such as lead-acid batteries and motors without encoders to know whether or not they’re moving, noted Kent.
“As a lifelong wheelchair user, it’s been so frustrating for me to see a $50 robotics kit on Amazon that has better technology than my $40,000 wheelchair,” he said. “We’ve done probably over 200 customer interviews of people that use wheelchairs and have a lot of spreadsheets about things they like, things they don’t like, and so we really feel like we’ve done a lot of the legwork around the user needs and design requirements.”
“Our vision for this company is to really have the end users have an active seat at the table,” said Kent. “I’m obviously the co-founder of the company, but we really plan to build out extensive advisory boards of end users that are able to actively help design and shape the technology.”
ATDev also plans to eventually employ end users with disabilities as remote support technicians so they can bring their own experiences to understanding how the technology works, he said.
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ATDev works to bring its systems to market
With one ATDev division focusing on getting Reflex to market, a separate team is working on technical milestones for its robotic wheelchair.
“One of our next most immediate milestones is an initial demonstration of a ‘simple’ task to be completed with a higher level of autonomy than we can do today,” said Roberts. “We’ll have a user doing normal activities of daily living, combining computer vision, a robotic arm, and a wheeled platform.”
The company plans to conduct this demonstration this coming summer, he said.
“Our broader vision at ATDev is to create an ecosystem of devices that enable people to stay independent, no matter their level of physical function,” Roberts said. “That’s going to include all types of robotic systems, everything from a lightweight, single-jointed exoskeleton like Reflex to robotic wheelchairs.”
ATDev is exhibiting at CES this week in the Venetian Expo Center, Booth 61261 in Hall G.
