Emphasizes Owen's lived experience and emotional connection
I want to tell you something personal.
I've used a wheelchair my entire life.
It's not just how I get around.
It's part of who I am.
And yet... I've spent forty years watching technology transform everything around me...
...except the one thing I depend on most.
My first computer was a miracle.
Now my phone recognizes my face.
Cars drive themselves.
Robots perform surgery.
But my wheelchair?
The same batteries my grandfather's chair used.
The same basic motors.
The same complete lack of intelligence.
Do you know what it feels like...
...to depend on something that doesn't know you exist?
My wheelchair has no idea where it is.
It doesn't know if I'm tired.
It can't help me reach that glass on the counter.
It just... waits.
And I wait with it.
Here's what breaks my heart.
It's not that the technology doesn't exist.
It's that the companies making wheelchairs have no reason to use it.
Insurance pays whatever they charge.
Regulations protect them from competition.
And everything — everything — is locked down.
Proprietary. Secret. Untouchable.
But what if we opened it up?
What if anyone could see how a wheelchair works?
Improve it?
Build on it?
That's the idea that changed my life.
That's RAMMP.
RAMMP is an open-source wheelchair platform.
Forty-one million dollars from ARPA-H.
The same agency that gave us the internet.
Open hardware. Open software. Open documentation.
Anyone can see it. Anyone can improve it. Anyone can build on it.
Imagine a wheelchair that knows you.
That learns how you move.
That reaches for things you can't reach.
That navigates when you're too tired to think.
Not replacing what I can do.
Extending it.
I've waited my whole life for this technology.
I'm done waiting.
I'm building it.
With the best engineers in the country.
At Pitt. Carnegie Mellon. Cornell. Purdue.
Because this isn't just about me.
By 2030, one in six people will be over 60.
One in four of them will need help getting around.
They deserve technology that treats them like human beings.
That's RAMMP.
Open source mobility. For everyone.
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