ATU764 – Replay – ATDev with Owen Kent

Hi, I’m Owen Kent, the co-founder of AT Dev. This is your assistant technology update.

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 764 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on January 16th, 2026. On today’s show, we are going back into the archives for a replay of show 693, which came out in September of 2024. For the show, we are joined by Owen Kent, co-founder at AT Dev. And you might say, Josh, why are we having AT Dev back on? Well, the reason is, because here this last week, they were selected as a CES 2026 winner of the Consumer Technology Association innovation for all startup experience at Eureka Park at the CES Convention in Las Vegas.

So it’s a very cool award that they were given. So I think it’s very important that we do recognize them for it. So I thought we’d go back into the archives to go back to this interview. Learn a little bit more about AT Dev, the great things that they’re doing. Learn a little bit more about Owen. And also as always, if you get down in the show notes, you can find information on their website and all the great things that they’ve been up to. We’ll work to have Owen back on the show here sometime soon to talk a little bit more about where AT Dev is going. But I thought it was important just to celebrate their win there at CES to go ahead and have this episode on. I’d also like to give a huge thank you to all the participants who attended our first full day training of 2026 yesterday.

This training was over JAWS, which is job access with speech, large screen reader that a lot of individuals use and just some training on how to use it in some different situations. So if you did miss our full day training, you can always find those trainings at our archives. The video of it should be uploaded here very soon. So if you go to eastersealstech.com, go to our full day trainings and our archives, you can easily find those as well as find out what our upcoming trainings are. If you’d like to be alerted when registration opens for any of those full day trainings, you can always sign up at our website at eastersealstech.com. Promise we won’t spam you. We really just send you updates whenever big things like that are coming out. And finally, folks, before we get into the show, we’re very excited to announce that it looks like April 22nd is going to be Assistive Technology Awareness Day this year. So more to come on some exciting events and things going down for AT Awareness Day this year. But for now, let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

Listeners, I’ve wanted to take a moment just to tell you about some of the other great things that you can find over at Eastersealstech.com. Of course, you can find all of our podcasts, this one as well as the others, but you can also find a wealth of other knowledge and great assistive technology things. As you all know, INDATA is the Tech Act provider for the state of Indiana. But if you’re looking for your local Tech Act provider, well, you can find that there too. You can go to eastersteelstech.com/states or just find it from the dropdown menus. Podcasting are not the only thing that we do. You can also find tech tips. These come out every Monday and are a short video that will show you a piece of assistive technology, another adaptive device, or maybe a different way of using something in order to help individuals with disabilities and special needs.

You can find out about our full day trainings. You can also sign up for them, attend, and even go back and look at the archives to find some of our old trainings and watch those at your leisure. You can find out about our different programs, including the clinical assistive technology program and all the amazing things that INDATA does. If you’re here in the state of Indiana and you’d like to access any of our services, be that the library, the demonstration, program, or the depot. All that information is located right there on Eastersealstech.com. You’ll also find blog posts and just tons and tons of content all related to assistive technology. I thank you so much for listening. Now let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

Maybe you’re looking for some new podcasts to listen to. Well, make sure to check out our sister podcast, ATFAQ or Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions. On Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions, Brian Norton leads our panel of experts as we try to answer your assistive technology questions. This show does rely on you, so we’re always looking for new questions, comments, or even your answers on assistive technology questions. So remember, if you’re looking for more assistive technology podcasts to check out, you can check out our sister shows, ATFAQ, wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify and Amazon Music. And coming up next on the show, we welcome back Bridging Apps with an app worth mentioning.

This is Ale Gonzalez with bridging apps, and this is an app worth mentioning. This week’s featured app is called Residio Smart Home. The Residio app is a smart home management tool that allows users to control their thermostats, security systems, water leak detectors, and other connected devices from their smartphones or tablets. Designed for each of yous, it integrates Honeywell Home and first accessible way to manage home environments using assistive technology, such as iGaze tracking, voice commands, and adaptive controls. The Residio app enhances independence for individuals with mobility challenges by offering remote thermostat control through accessible technology integrations. Residio’s intuitive dashboard ensures users can easily navigate and customize their smart home setup for greater independence and convenience. Residio Smart Home is currently available for both iOS and Android devices and is free to download. For more information on this app and others like it, visit www.bridgingapps.org.

Listeners today, I am excited to welcome Owen Kent, the co-founder of AT Dev to the show to tell us all about the exciting work that they are doing. Owen, welcome to the show.

Hey, thank you, Josh. I’m happy to be here.

Yeah, and I am happy to learn more about AT Dev, but before we do that, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. My name’s Owen. I live in Colorado, a little bit north of Denver. I have spinal muscular atrophy, so I’ve actually been involved with Easterseals for a good part of my life. I was a camper back when I was in middle school probably, out in the Colorado camp, and that was just a really wonderful experience I had there. Yeah. And after I graduated high school, I went out to UC Berkeley where I got my degree in film, which I like to say, which is why I run a robotics company now. But yeah, I’m a lifelong wheelchair user, power wheelchair. And yeah, I’ve just been really fortunate to benefit from some of the advances in technology throughout my lifetime. I was born in the early ’90s, and so just seeing the trajectory of what was available to me when I was a kid versus what was available to me today is just something that’s always really inspired me and ultimately led me to want to start my own company to build some of the more groundbreaking technologies.

Nice. And I’m so glad you put all that in there because for every kid whose parents says that that degree in film’s never going to do anything for you, you can show them that it can get you a job at a robotics company. But I love the way that you put that. Owen, I guess this kind of leads me on to what is AT Dev?

Yeah, so AT Dev is my company. It stands for Assistive Technology Development, and we intentionally wanted to leave the name [inaudible 00:09:04] because our mission is to really build the future of mobility devices. So we’re starting out with a at-home physical therapy device. My co-founder, Todd Roberts, he is an exoskeleton designer and mechanical engineer. So we were actually roommates at UC Berkeley and came to find out that we shared a mutual passion for building assistive technology. And I pitched to him the idea of using robotics to do at-home physical therapy because as a wheelchair user and someone with chronic atrophy in my joints, I’ve always had struggles accessing the amount of physical therapy that I wanted, whether that was from a lack of insurance reimbursement or just simply the logistical challenges of having to go to the office and get out of my chair and for an hour appointment, I might only get 10 to 15 minutes of actual therapy.

And so yeah, the idea really, really caught on. And that was back in 2019 when we met. We incorporated our company in 2020 and received some early grant funding through the [inaudible 00:10:47] Science Foundation and then later SBIR from the NIH. So yeah, that was the inception of our company. But in the future, we have a number of plans and ideas on how to allow people to live independently regardless of their age or disability.

That’s great. I want to dig in a little bit deeper. You kind of said using robotics for at-home physical therapy. Can you tell me, at least as much as you can, what the device or the thought behind the device you’re working on is?

Yeah, sure. So the device is called reflex, and it’s a single jointed knee exoskeleton designed for doing rehabilitation following a total knee replacement or really any knee surgery. So it’s an adjunct therapy for the physical therapist to prescribe and the patient would bring it home with them. And the device is able to provide passive range of motion as well as active resistance training. And really what is really exciting is it also is telehealth enabled. So it’s able to send real-time updates to the clinician in order to monitor the patient’s progress, which we really think is going to help improve outcomes and enable physical therapists to be more efficient in the patients that they serve.

And that’s wonderful because I’ve known more people than I can think that actually have had some sort of knee surgery and sometimes it goes really well and sometimes it doesn’t. And I don’t know how much of that is them not doing the things they’re supposed to be doing afterwards and everything. So I’m sure from a physical therapy or a physical therapist standpoint, that’s great because you know, are they doing their exercises? Are they doing everything that they need to do to get back up to strength? But also, like you said, with having the data of if something isn’t working or is going wrong, you’ve got that in real time as opposed to the just, I don’t know, I’m never good at telling the doctor anything is, “Well, it hurt last Tuesday,” or, “Oh, this didn’t seem okay.” But actually to have that data I’m sure would be an amazing help to them as well as just probably bring down the amount of time that people need to recuperate from the surgery itself.

Exactly. Yeah. From some of the research we’ve done, compliance for at-home physical therapy is around 30% and those numbers are… It’s also like when the dentist asks you how often you brush your teeth, you tend to exaggerate the numbers. But yeah, we’ve been really fortunate to partner with a number of academic universities and hospitals to run some studies as well as sign in some distribution agreements. So yeah, we hope to do a limited market release in the US actually later this fall.

Oh, very cool. That was going to be my next question was what phase of R&D are you in, but it sounds like it’s at least limited, going to maybe be out there where some folks can try to start using it.

Yep, that’s right. Yeah we’re, like I said, a limited market release. We’re starting with the VA and workers’ comp. We just signed a distribution agreement with Apex Health Group and they’re a national group. So we’re really, really excited to be able to start helping people recover faster.

Well, that’s great. I can see that going a lot of places beyond just the knee, when the technology works and everything, I can really see that going to so many different places. I’ve got to admit, when you first said exoskeletons and at-home physical therapy, I had this picture of just an evil robot physical therapist yelling at you to do your exercises, and it always scared me. And I love that you brought up the, not lying, but always overexaggerating maybe how much you actually complied with the treatment plan, because I don’t think anything could be further from the truth. The folks who seem to do the best in physical therapy hate their physical therapist because they’re actually doing the work.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I mean, I think it’s a cool example of how myself as someone with a pretty significant disability has been able to use technology in a new way. So initially I had the idea because I have a Kinova Jaco robotic arm on my chair, and I was noticing that I was using it to stretch my body, and that’s where the idea came from. And then as we went through a number of different startup accelerators, we realized that the problem space is actually far larger than just people with neuromuscular conditions, and that’s what ultimately led us to focus on total knee replacements as our beachhead market. So I really like that journey.

Oh, definitely, definitely. And Owen, you kind of said a little bit, and I want to just push you a little bit, where do you see AT Dev going in the future? I mean, this is a great starting off point, but where can you really see it going as it just continues to progress?

So yeah, like I said, our mission is to build the future of mobility. And really what that means to me is allowing people to live as independently as they want with the support of technology, whether they have mobility issues from a chronic disability, like I do, or an acquired disability, or just simply from aging. A lot of my family, I want to see them age in place, in their home and be comfortable and not have to go to a nursing home if they don’t want to. And so our vision is to build a ecosystem of robotic devices, primarily at home that are enabling people to live independently and with a specific focus on mobility and getting people rehabilitated faster, as well as developing the next generation of robotic wheelchairs and designing what the future of mobility is.

Nice. Nice. Very, very cool. And while I do love this device, I also just can’t wait to see just how far it all goes. Owen, as somebody that’s, well, not done assistive technology since the ’90s, but you kind of just mentioned a little bit, and I always like to find out about folks’ journeys, but you talked about the difference in technology from when you were younger to today. What’s the biggest difference that you see or I guess that you experience from back then to now in really in access or accessibility or in the technology that you can use?

Yeah. I mean, I grew up in a house where we didn’t have TV. I grew up in the mountains of Colorado, and so I think I got my first computer when I was four or five, and I don’t even know if we had the internet until later. And so for someone with a disability, just the amount of independence I’ve been able to get through something as simple as a Bluetooth mouse is something that has enabled me to not only live independently, but go through college and graduate and ultimately start my own startup, which is pretty challenging for anyone to do, let alone someone with some real mobility issues. And yeah, what I’m particularly excited about is to be building a platform technology where a lot of these different innovations like smart home technology, for example, can be working in concert with other assistive technology devices to be able to really enhance independence and also improve the experience for at-home caregivers as well.

Yeah, that’s a problem that most people don’t really talk about. It’s kind of the at-home caregivers and just the shortness that there are the shortage of those that there is. I’m not sure how it is in Colorado, but I assume it’s like everywhere. I know here in Indiana, there’s some pockets, especially of the state, you kind of brought up rural Colorado here in rural Indiana, it’s hit or miss whether there’s anyone to be able to assist or anything that can take the burden off that. Well, that whole-

Anything

Yeah, that whole group of folks.

Yeah. And that’s really the problem that we’re aiming to solve at AT Dev. Currently in the US, 15 million people require at-home care of varying degrees, and that number is expected to double by 2040 as the population ages. So as you know, there’s already a caregiver shortage and some real serious funding issues, and in just a few years, that’s going to be at least twice as severe. And so I really think that we have to leverage these new technologies to reduce the burden on caregivers to be able to provide effective and quality in home care.

Yeah. And anything we can do to… Well, and you brought it up earlier, allow people to be independent in their homes, as long as they want to be and really can. And like you brought up, there’s already a caregiver shortage, it’s going to get worse. So we don’t want that to be the barrier that makes folks not be able to live independently. So any tools we can do, and we’re happy that AT Dev’s working on tools to be able to help folks be able to just stay home and stay independent and do what it is that they really want to do. Oh, and just because I have you on, so I have to ask, because hopefully this will kind of help other folks out there. But like you said, a startup is really rough for anybody. So if anybody out there, I don’t know, is a film student and their roommate’s a robotics student and they think they have a good idea for a startup, what kind of advice can you give to them just from the experiences you’ve had doing this?

Yeah. Well, for me, I’ve really been blessed to have a really wonderful co-founder and that has made the experience far more tolerable. You really want to work with the best people that you can because that’s ultimately what is going to… Yeah, it’s like being married. Yeah.

Except for I think you spend more time with the co-founder than you get to with your spouse.

Yeah, exactly. But I think also you really need to be able to take rejection. You want to be able to really still believe in yourself and what you’re doing and believe that you’re… Yeah. I mean, well, for me, I’m definitely driven by wanting to make a positive impact in the world. I don’t think that I would be as satisfied just running a, I don’t know, database management company for banks or whatever it would be, although maybe the funding would be easier. I’m particularly motivated by building technology that will improve my life somewhat selfishly, but also improve the lives of other people.

Yeah. I think that’s awesome advice. Awesome advice. Well, Owen, if our listeners want to find out more about AT Dev and all the cool things that you’re up to, what’s a good way for them to do that?

Yeah, so we’re on LinkedIn. You can go to our website, assistivetechnology.dev or atdev.tech. And yeah, feel free to email me. My email is owen@assistivetech.dev. And yeah, I’d be happy to chat anytime.

Awesome. We’ll put all that information down in the show notes. Well, Owen, thank you so much for coming on today for telling us about AT Dev and really also just for giving us some insights on kind of what it takes to start up such a, I want to say, ambitious idea and be able to get a product to where it is. And just I love hearing about the motivation to get it all started and then just the, I don’t know, the luck, fate, whatever to be able to partner with a co-founder who has some of the other skills and drive and so you can work together to make these cool things. We’re looking forward to seeing everything that comes out of it in the future as well. So thank you so much for coming on.

Yeah. Thank you, Josh. My pleasure.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on assistive technology update? If so, call our listener line at 317-721-7124. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or shoot us a note on Twitter @indataproject. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation or INTRAC. You can find out more about INTRAC at relayindiana.com. A special thanks to Nicole Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule.

Today’s show was produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, Easterseals Crossroads are supporting partners or this host. This was your assistive technology update. And I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.