Crisis-focused, call-to-action, no time to waste
We have a problem.
A big problem.
And we're running out of time to fix it.
By 2030 — that's four years from now — one in six people on Earth will be over 60.
One in four of them will need help getting around.
That's hundreds of millions of people.
And the technology they'll depend on?
It's stuck in the 1990s.
I've been a wheelchair user my whole life.
I've watched smartphones go from science fiction to everyone's pocket.
I've watched cars learn to drive themselves.
I've watched robots perform surgery.
And my wheelchair?
Lead acid batteries. The same chemistry from 1859.
No sensors. It doesn't know where it is.
No software updates. What you buy is what you get. Forever.
This isn't an accident. This is a system failure.
The companies making wheelchairs have no reason to innovate.
They have a captured market.
Insurance pays whatever they charge.
Regulations protect them from competition.
And they hide behind closed-source systems.
Proprietary electronics. Secret software. Locked-down documentation.
If you're an engineer who wants to help?
You can't get in.
Universities can't teach wheelchair engineering because there's nothing to study.
Researchers can't publish improvements because the systems are secret.
The door is closed.
That ends now.
RAMMP.
Robotic Assistive Mobility Modular Platform.
Forty-one million dollars from ARPA-H.
The same government agency that created the internet.
We're building an open-source wheelchair platform.
Open hardware. Anyone can see the designs.
Open software. Anyone can read the code.
Open documentation. Anyone can understand how it works.
The door is open.
This isn't one company.
This is a national effort.
University of Pittsburgh. HERL — the Human Engineering Research Laboratories.
Carnegie Mellon. The best robotics program on the planet.
Cornell. Purdue. Northeastern.
The top engineering minds in America.
All working together. All building on the same open foundation.
When someone solves a problem, everyone gets the solution.
Robotic arms that can reach what you can't reach.
Autonomous navigation that helps when you're exhausted.
Smart home integration. Your chair talks to your house.
And repairs that take days, not months.
Right now, if your wheelchair breaks, you wait three to six months.
With open platforms, any qualified technician can fix it.
Standardized parts. Public documentation. You're not trapped.
This isn't about gadgets.
This is about independence.
It's about people staying in their homes instead of institutions.
It's about dignity.
It's about treating people with disabilities like human beings.
Better mobility technology means more years of independence.
More years at home with family.
More years of living.
I've waited forty years for this technology.
I'm done waiting.
We have the funding. Forty-one million dollars.
We have the team. The best engineers in the country.
We have the blueprint. Open source. Proven. Scalable.
The crisis is coming. We're going to be ready.
RAMMP.
Open source mobility.
For everyone.
— END V3 —