Jonathan Ko is a Seattle attorney with a spinal cord injury. He is also collaborating with robotics researchers at the University of Washington develop a robotic arm that can assist people with motor impairments feed themselves. He brought the Assistive Dexterous Arm into his home in Seattle in Sept. 2024 for a week to feed him meals such as a breakfast of avocado toast, which he is shown doing in this photo, while controlling the device with a mouth-operated joystick.
Taylor Kessler Faulkner / Personal Robotics Lab, University of Washington
For about 10 years, researchers at the University of Washington’s Personal Robotics Lab have been developing a robotic arm that can help people with motor impairments, such as quadriplegics, feed themselves. That’s a task they may rely on human caregivers to do. The Assistive Dexterous Arm can be mounted onto a surface such as a power wheelchair or hospital table. With vision and touch sensors, ADA can determine how to best grasp and maneuver a bite of chicken or watermelon, for example, toward a user’s mouth.
The lived experiences of people with disabilities are often ignored in the development of new technologies that could benefit them, according to Amal Nanavati, a recent PhD graduate from the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. But that isn’t the case with the ADA project. Dozens of people with motor impairments have provided feedback and guidance on it over the years, and some have even taken on the role of “community researchers” working alongside the UW robotics team.
Jonathan Ko is a Seattle attorney with a spinal cord injury. He is also collaborating with robotics researchers at the University of Washington develop a robotic arm that can assist people with motor impairments feed themselves. He brought the Assistive Dexterous Arm into his home in Seattle in Sept. 2024 for a week to feed him bites of food in a variety of different conditions, such as a snack of fruit, which he is shown doing in this photo, while reclining in bed.
Taylor Kessler Faulkner / Personal Robotics Lab, University of Washington
Jonathan Ko is a Seattle-based patent attorney and ADA community researcher who brought the device home to feed himself meals for a week. He and Nanavati are authors on a recently published paper describing this real-world testing of the technology. They join us to talk about what they learned and share their thoughts on the future of robot-assisted caregiving.
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