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When Hollis Pierce took one of his first selfies, he was surrounded by the engineering team that made it possible.
“I’m 38 years old and I’ve never taken my own selfie,” Pierce said.
Pierce uses a powered wheelchair and advocates for people with physical disabilities. He is also the head of accessibility and partnerships at Ottawa-based Sielo Robotics.
Part of his job involves product testing for the robotics company. Pierce is able to direct Arlo, the company’s assistive robotic arm, using a space mouse, a device that can manipulate 3D environments in six directions.
“I sort of put it in my head that I wanted to pick up my phone and take a selfie and that was going to be my goal for the day,” Pierce said. “It took me about an hour to do at first.”
There’s a learning curve, but Pierce said the latest fourth-generation model is almost like playing a video game.
Pierce says he hasn’t been shy about telling his teammates “what is absolutely fabulous about [Arlo] and what is absolutely horrible.”
The company, which was founded at the University of Ottawa, prides itself on taking inspiration from users with lived experience.
Their work is set to speed up this summer after raising a million dollars in seed funding this May.
“We didn’t have any [venture capital] or organizations funding what we were doing. It was all people… hearing what we’re doing,” said Laila Burns, the company’s chief revenue officer.
Sielo Robotics is still in a lab at the University of Ottawa. It has partnered with The 8-80 Collaborative, a partnership between the CHEO Research Institute and Bruyère Health.
Before Arlo can make it into homes and communities, they’ll need more testers like Pierce.
“The arm would be a huge problem solver from someone like me, to help me solve important needs like wiping my nose or having a drink of water and not making it a complex need, in that I need to call a nurse, wait 15 minutes,” Pierce said.
Rafaël Hébert, Seilo’s chief technology officer and a recent engineering graduate, said seeing the progress users have made gives him hope.
“He’s able to take a selfie and grab items to put on his tray and even interact with his own body,” Hébert said of Pierce’s progress with the robotic arm.
Duplicating complex human actions in unplanned environments is a major challenge in robotics. On top that, Hébert said, Sielo is collecting feedback from users who’ve already adapted technology to their needs.
“Everyone controls their wheelchair in a slightly different way. People use eye gaze, sip and puff, joysticks … switches in their headrests, their legs,” Hébert said.
“We can translate that to being able to use our product as well.”
Masoud Karimi, Sielo’s robotics control engineer and a post-doctoral student, is working to develop an AI-enabled system for the arm that allows it to effectively record routine tasks.
“Our goal is to use this technology to do more complex tasks that [are] really hard for people with disability to do [on] their own using a space mouse,” Karimi said.
The company’s goal has always been to create a device that’s dramatically more affordable than anything else on the market and is covered by insurance, said Burns, the chief revenue officer.
The seed funding will allow the company to speed up development after years of raising money through student entrepreneur pitch competitions and research funding, she said.
Burns, who put her studies on hold to focus on the company, predicted Sielo will have their robotic arms in people’s homes by the end of the year, “at least for beta testing.”
In the lab, Pierce said his selfie-taking skills are improving. He’s most excited about the potential Arlo could unlock for the next generation.
“Having Arlo available to people with disabilities at a young age will be fantastic,” he said.
