ATU486 – Parrots Inc with David Hojah

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David Hojah:
Hi, this is David Hojah and I am the founder and CEO of Parrots Inc, and this is your Assistive Technology Update.

Josh Anderson:
Hello, and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson with the INDATA project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis Indiana. Welcome to episode 486 of Assistive Technology Update. It’s scheduled to be released on September 18th, 2020. On today’s show we’re super excited to have David Hojah, the CEO and founder of Parrots Inc. And he’s on to talk about Polly, their socially assistive robot and different ways that it can help individuals with different disabilities. We’ve got a lot of stories on the day. One about some students working together over Zoom to create kits to help families with ABA therapy from home. Story about the LA Metro becoming more accessible by changing the way that you pay.

Josh Anderson:
Quick story about some hearing accommodations being built into iOS 14 and finishing it off with a story about a partnership between a soccer star and a technology for individuals who are blind or visually impaired. Don’t forget that if you have a question about assistive technology or maybe a suggestion for someone we should have on the show, don’t hesitate to give us a call on our listener line at 317 721-7124. You could also send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAproject. We want to thank you all for taking time out of your day to listen to us. And now let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

Josh Anderson:
Hey there folks, I’m very excited to announce that we’ve been able to revamp our entire INDATA website. So if you go over to eastersealstech.com, that’s eastersealstech.com, you can check out our whole new website. We tried to make it a little bit more accessible, a little bit easier to find the information that you might be looking for, a little bit easier to direct you straight to this show. And I guess if you’re listening to this show to find out about the website, you probably don’t really need that help, but you can find out about our clinical services, our AFP program, our loan library, our device demonstration, our depo and all the other great services that INDATA does. You can also find your local AT act in your state, straight there from our website. So if you have a little bit of extra time on your hands and you want to find out more about the INDATA project, about our YouTube channel, our podcasts, or the other services that we offer, just head on to eastersealstech.com and check out our whole new website.

Josh Anderson:
Do you find yourself a little bit more time on your hands? Maybe you’re really busy and only have a little bit of time to listen to podcast or maybe listening to this has you thinking, what about this? What about that? Well, if you’re short on time, or if you have questions about assistive technology, we have other podcasts that might just fit your needs. The first one is Accessibility Minute. This one minute long podcast gives you a little taste of assistive technology and really kind of wet your whistle to have you go out and find out more about a piece of technology and how it might help those you work with, yourself, or maybe a friend or family member. If you happen to have questions about assistive technology, we have assistive technology frequently asked questions or ATFAQ. This show is hosted by Brian Norton and features yours truly along with Belva Smith and Tracy Castillo. As we all talk about assistive technology with questions that come in from email, phone calls, and other means.

Josh Anderson:
We also don’t always know the answer so it’s very important that we have listeners that can help us out with some of those questions, because while we like to think every once in a while that we may know everything, we’re proven wrong almost daily on that one. So if you’re looking for more podcasts to listen to, if you’re short on time and need a really quick podcast, or if you have questions about assistive technology, make sure to check out Accessibility Minute and Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions wherever you get your podcasts.

Josh Anderson:
So, first story today comes out of Reno, Nevada, and it’s actually from the Reno news review written by Frank Mullen. It’s titled teens company provides autism help. So this story talks about five teens who over the summer were able to participate in a program that kind of helps kids figure out how to make their own startup. Work together in order to accomplish these goals. Of course, most summers, this would be kind of a seminar kind of thing. All everybody would get together, be able to learn these things, make up a product or a service, and then kind of market it out to folks. Well, since we all live in a whole different world this year, everything was done by Zoom. So all five of these students have never actually met in person, but instead have done everything on Zoom. The summit program is called LaunchX and it’s actually been around since 2013. Essentially, students try to become part of it, they put down maybe some of their interests, and then they are paired with other students who have those same kind of interests.

Josh Anderson:
Well, the company that came out of these five students is called Auesome. That’s A-U-E-S-O-M-E. And what they do is they make customizable at home therapy kits for children with autism. And these were created under the thought that ABA therapy really works well for kids with autism, but that’s usually very intensive, can be very expensive. And during shutdown orders and other stuff like that, even getting to therapy appointments or being able to get the amount of therapy needed can be almost impossible. So what they did was they started these kits, which have different tools that can be used like ABA therapy, but at home. So different flashcards, different items to help with communication, fine motor skills, learning shapes and all these other things that would normally to be taught by ABA therapy can now be brought home so that these folks can still get the help that they need and be able to learn these things.

Josh Anderson:
So the activities and the kids focus on helping kids develop social and emotional intelligence, it can help teach facial expressions, emotional responses, also intricate movements, lacing, pinching, building, that can be applied to everyday tasks such as tying shoelaces, using pencils, holding utensils and all those different kinds of things. They pair these kits with an online app so the students can use those to learn again at home. So I really liked this story just because it’s great seeing how these students use the new normal, normal 2.0, whatever the heck you want to call it right now, they use Zoom in order to find a need that was always there but of course it was exacerbated by all the pandemic stuff and the things that have happened, and then try to find a solution to that.

Josh Anderson:
It does say it is still a work in progress. They’re taking feedback from the folks that are using these kits in order to make them better and more usable, but we definitely wish them all the luck in the world. And hopefully this is something that can end up helping a whole lot of people. We’ll go ahead and put a link to this over in our show notes so you can check it out for yourself.

Josh Anderson:
So our next story comes to us from the Daily Bruin out of LA and it’s titled, LA Metro aims to promote accessibility and safety with new digital tap cards. It’s written by Elizabeth Sherwood. This talks about a new way that you can pay for the LA Metro by using your phone. Essentially, what happens is you download a virtual fare card on to different Apple devices. It’s available on Apple watch and iPhone right now and they hope to roll it out in Android sometime soon. So what this does is it cuts down the need to actually go to a little kiosk and buy a physical payment card. So since you don’t have to do that, A, it cuts out a step. So for individuals with different disabilities, they do not have to go up and try to purchase this from a different little kiosk or kind of a vending machine.

Josh Anderson:
All they would have to do is put the card on their phone, on their watch or on their device and they just have to get their device close to the reader and it will sit there and go ahead and take their fare. So really think this was actually of course, instigated because of minimizing physical contact in public places, because that is very important right now as people do still need to get out, do still need to get transportation, but don’t want to have to touch a whole heck of a lot of things with worry about coronavirus and perhaps being infected by it. But I can also see where this can really help a lot of individuals with disabilities. For one thing, it really cuts down on the amount of steps that you have to do. Again, you’re not going to a vending machine or a kiosk having to buy a Metro card in order to ride the bus or public transportation.

Josh Anderson:
Instead, you can just put it right on your phone so that can be done from home. It could probably be done with voice commands, with switch access, with all different kinds of access methods that are probably already being used in order to access the iPhone or the Apple watch if you prefer to do it that way. Another thing is you’re not going to have to try to swipe a card or anything that may have some very fine motor movement, instead you’re just taking your device and getting it close to the reader so that it can sit there and say that you are able to ride.

Josh Anderson:
This is also available in some other states right now and I’m sure more and more states will probably go to this kind of virtual payment system, just to A, minimize contact and B, just to make things easier for riders as these public transportation systems try to gain more ridership. But of course, we’ve talked on here before, and we’ve even had guests on here that’s talked about accessibility of public transportation and how that’s kind of an issue all the way across the United States. So this is a step in the right direction, a small step for sure, but definitely one that can help out. We will go ahead and put a link to this story over in our show notes so that you can go ahead and read it whenever you like.

Josh Anderson:
Here we are in the middle of September and usually around this time, we’d be talking all about the new Apple operating system, which this year will be iOS 14. As of right now, it’s not really completely known when iOS 14 will come out. Usually they pair this with the introduction of the newest iPhone, but the iPhone 12 has kind of been delayed a little bit because well, you know, all the things going on around the world. But we’re starting to see a little trickle of some of the new accessibility features that will be built into iOS 14. And we’ll do our best to talk about those here on the show. And once iOS 14 actually does drop, hopefully be able to talk about all of them and how they can kind of help. But I’ve found a quick story over at iDrop News. It says, hear better and improve audio with new headphone accommodations in iOS, 14. It’s written by Sergio Velasquez.

Josh Anderson:
And it talks about a new feature in iOS 14 called headphone accommodations. So what headphone accommodations does is it lets people with hearing problems, listen and enjoy movies, songs, and even phone calls without any extra equipment other than the iPhone and a pair of AirPods. So what it does is it actually lets you customize the way you listen to your iPhone. So you got to think, hearing problems just run the gambit. There’s so many different kinds. They affect people differently. Maybe they can hear different tones, different levels. Maybe the high frequencies or the low frequencies are hard. So it’s very, very different for a whole lot of folks and turning up the volume isn’t always enough to actually make the person be able to access things. So if you happen to have hearing problems, you can navigate through the accessibility settings on the iPhone to control how loud softer sounds are when listening to the headphones.

Josh Anderson:
And it will actually walk you through and say, which one of these sounds better? Which one of these sounds better? So if you kind of think of maybe going to the eye doctor, if you’ve ever done that, they show you one piece of glass and see if you can read the words better, flip it to another one and ask you which one of these is better, in order to make an informed decision and have the right recommendations for you. So basically by doing this, the headphones only amplify sounds that you have trouble hearing such as maybe softer sounds in videos or songs, or even amplify someone’s voice in a phone call. It says another thing that’s really cool about this headphone accommodations is that if you happen to have the AirPods pro you can take advantage of transparency mode, and this will actually boost voices and sounds around you.

Josh Anderson:
This is going to actually help, even if you don’t have hearing problems because you can sit there and make it to where sounds come through a little bit clearer so that you don’t have to just turn up the volume to hear it better because that could of course cause hearing damage in the long run. There’s a huge catch to this though. Headphone accommodations doesn’t work with every pair of headphones. In fact, it doesn’t even work with every pair of AirPods. It only works with headphones that have Apples H1 chip. So that’s only available in second generation AirPods, the AirPods pro and some select Beats headphones and EarPods.

Josh Anderson:
So it’s very simple to set up, you just go into settings, select accessibility, scroll down and under physical and motor section, tap on audio accessibility, select headphone accommodations, turn it on, and then go through to customize your audio experience. Sooner that Apple is always adding new accessibility features and we really can’t wait to find out that everything that iOS 14 has to offer in the way of accessibility, but this is just one of the first ones that we’ve kind of got here. So I will go ahead and put a link to the story on the headphone accommodations over in the show notes.

Josh Anderson:
Next, we have a very quick story about the FC Barcelona soccer legend Lionel Messi has partnered with OrCam with the goal of providing the blind with AI driven text to read software. So for anyone who’s a fan of, in the US I guess we’ll call it soccer, but to the rest of the world, football, Lionel Messi is kind of the the big deal. Kind of the big name. Probably one of the best players, if not the best player to ever play the game.

Josh Anderson:
But it says here that he is actually teamed up with OrCam, who we’ve had on this show before to help bring their technology to individuals who are blind and visually impaired. So it says that they’re actually collaborating more than just pushing product, more than just as kind of a spokesperson, but Messi is actually going around and helping them out with handing these OrCams out to individuals who are blind and visually impaired and showing them kind of how to use the technology to meet their needs. Now, of course, they did this a little bit before the whole pandemic kind of hit, but it’s something they’re hoping to be able to do again. It says the way they’re actually setting these up is they’re not telling these folks that they’re going to A, meet Lionel Messi or B, provided with an OrCam. So it’s a huge for individuals whenever this happens to them.

Josh Anderson:
So again, we’ve had OrCam on here before and talked about their technology a little bit. I just thought this was a really cool story about one of, probably my favorite soccer players, although he doesn’t play for my favorite team, but we won’t get into that because I don’t want to turn off any listeners, but I thought it was just a really cool collaboration that they’re doing together to help open up the whole world for individuals who are blind or visually impaired and let them meet an amazing soccer star at the same time. We’ll put a link to this story over in our show notes.

Josh Anderson:
All of us could use a little assistance from time to time, but for those with certain neurological disorders, that need can be even greater. Well, what if an assistant was available that could connect right to your wheelchair? And what if it even looked like a cute little parrot? Well, our guest today is David Hojah, CEO and founder of Parrots Inc. And he’s here to tell us all about Polly, the socially assistive robot. David, welcome to the show.

David Hojah:
Oh, hi. I’m so happy to be here.

Josh Anderson:
And it’s great to have you on. Before we get into talking all about Polly, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

David Hojah:
Okay. Yes. I mean, since I was a kid, I always liked to invent and create things and my uncle got spinal cord injury. So I know someone has full time wheelchair users since my childhood. That’s one of the inspiration to be more focused on assistive technology and medical devices. And then when I went to college, studying mechanical engineering at Harvard, I got inspired by many other people, including Stephen Hawking. And I do believe there are many people like Stephen Hawking out there and they are just missing accessible technology to be the next Stephen Hawking, the next engineer designer, a professor, whatever they want to be. And I found my mission. My purpose is to help people to be able to achieve their dreams. And that’s why we are here.

Josh Anderson:
Excellent. Well, you did a perfect lead in there. So go ahead and tell us about Parrots Inc and Polly.

David Hojah:
Yeah. As I mentioned, my uncle, Stephen Hawking and many other mentors and friends, especially in the Boston area because I lived there and studied there for many years and then I have a special mentor and very special friend in Boston. His name is Steve [inaudible 00:17:15], probably he’s very well known in the Boston area and around the country as well. I started idea, which is helping them for navigation as to see what’s around them, what’s behind them. But we did a lot of user testing as well, talking with other conditions as well, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy, many other conditions, and then realize, okay, there is another bigger problem here, which is communication as well. Okay. Then using current assistive technology, other communication devices, it’s very slow to use. And sometimes we have to wait 10 minutes just to hear one sentence.

David Hojah:
And sometimes it’s obvious I just need confirmation. And then I say, okay, with my background in robotics and [inaudible 00:18:03] medical devices, okay, we can figure something out here. Then I decided to jump to make the device more into communication. And one of the things, I love birds. I had a parrot when he was a kid. So I know the parrot can mimic your voice. How about I can make the device like a parrot. So the parrot can mimic your voice or regenerate your voice to speak for you and to speak for all of them, anyone who cannot speak and help them with many more as well. And then that’s why the name it’s coming parrots. So because the parrot very friendly, very as a companion for human. So that’s the name for Parrot Inc coming from.

David Hojah:
And then with my background, we pushed the idea to be as complete a platform system. So including navigation so they can see a 360 view while driving the wheelchair and also to communicate with their voices through the device, kind of like mimic or regenerate their voices, if they cannot speak. Also the good news here, our devices basically can be compatible with many abilities, which is like, [inaudible 00:19:31] joystick, head mouse, chin control, and many more. So that’s basically us and our mission statement here is giving people with physical and communication challenges, the freedom to connect with the [inaudible 00:19:47].

Josh Anderson:
Very nice. And I know to do that, you have the five CS and that’s communication, control, connectivity, compatibility, and caregiving. Can you take a little bit of time and kind of explain how Polly is able to help with those five CS?

David Hojah:
Yes. So the first, which is a control. We have 360 computer vision. So when they are driving, they will turn around, the system [inaudible 00:20:13] people, there’s cars, there’s objects, there’s even kids or dogs around them. So give them a feel of safety while they drive. We have this feature with this pretty much all new cars with sensors to give them out what’s going on in highways, even in the neighborhood, you can see that as well. The same thing, we want this to be in the wheelchair because it can be dangerous even to cross the street. So that’s the control with the physics division. Then the second one, which is communication, which is pretty much one of the main thing here. So we have very smart communication with AI machine learning with very intuitive predictive system which is four times faster than any current communication devices including [inaudible 00:21:06] devices.

David Hojah:
So basically because the system can see what’s going on in the environment and see there’s for example, some food or coffee, or if they are outdoor, even if they want to go for shopping, [inaudible 00:21:26] their favorite food or favorite objects they want to buy. So, and then the assistant can predict and interact and also it’s personalized machine learning. So we make this very personalized based on their behavior, based in their lifestyle. So the system will be very personalized. So it’s not just like, predict anything randomly, the system will predict based on their needs, based on their behavior and how they interact. And obviously you can change or adjust your settings or prediction as well. So once you use the device more, the system will understand that the user more. So that’s the communication part.

David Hojah:
Then we have the connectivity. It’s pretty simple, which is connect them to smartphone devices, including understanding the sound of the visual, if they have any action or something urgent. So they can interact also with a smartphone based on that. And I mentioned the compatibility. So our devices is compatible with pretty much most of abilities [inaudible 00:22:33] like eye tracking, head mouse, joystick, and even facial expression. We are still in development to integrate facial expressions. So you can just smile then this will give an action to the platform to do something while, for example, talking or switching off the light or et cetera.

David Hojah:
The five one which is a very important piece, which is caregiving because our device is we have the tablet and the device for the users, for the patient. And also we have another app for the caregivers, usually the family or even the nurse. So they can communicate with them very efficiently, effectively, faster, and also check on them because some people, they need special care. Some people need almost 24 hours healthcare monitoring to check on them. Some people even they are in ventilators or they need pretty much special care. So the device is there to help the caregivers and also if they have an emergency to communicate with the caregiver right away to come and check the user.

Josh Anderson:
David, what phase of development are you currently in?

David Hojah:
So we are now at the pilot testing and we have actually users this moment, most of them in Boston and also Washington DC and Washington State, also in St. Louis, Missouri as well. So I really want to expand the pilot with more users before the big launch it’s going to be next year. So the original plan was planning to launch this year, but we decided to have more features and also make sure everything is very solid for the user. Because one of the things we want this to be super friendly, meant to be for the users to improve their quality of life, to maximize their independence. And then we can have this for everyone.

Josh Anderson:
Very nice. And I’m sure the feedback from all the pilots will definitely help you be able to kind of figure out how to make it the most user friendly and the most helpful for folks.

David Hojah:
Yeah. And actually we are now even we’re accepting more pilot users, if anyone would like to join, you can just check our website and it’ll show up your information, which is our website is flyparrots.com and then hopefully we will get connect with you and give you one of our devices as well.

Josh Anderson:
Well, excellent. You just answered my next question because I was going to ask you how our listeners can find out more to sign up, but you already kind of gave me that. Well David, thank you so much for coming on the show today and telling us all about Parrots Inc, and Polly and how it can help individuals with just a whole myriad of uses.

David Hojah:
It’s a pleasure. We’re really happy to be here and to serve the community, to empower all those people, to be more independent, more free to connect with the all, to unleash their ability and power to be really happy and empowered in this world.

Josh Anderson:
Most definitely. We’ll make sure to have you back on as the pilot kind of wraps up and it’s available to the masses. Thank you again.

David Hojah:
Thank you so much.

Josh Anderson:
Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? If you do, call our listener line at 317 721-7124. Shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAproject, or check us out on Facebook. Are you looking for a transcript or show notes? Head on over to our website at www.eastersealstech.com. Assistive Technology Update is a proud member of the accessibility channel. For more shows like this, plus so much more, head over to accessibilitychannel.com. The views expressed by our guests are not necessarily that, of this host or the INDATA project. This has been your Assistive Technology Update I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA project at Easterseals Crossroads in Indianapolis, Indiana. Thank you so much for listening and we’ll see you next time.