- I didn't put your coat on.

It's in the back.

- [Spero] Okay.

- Turn this off.

Put this up.

It really is...

There we go there.

Put you down.

Close this.

(machine whirring) (ambient music) - You can hear my voice isn't gonna be around much longer.

Harder and harder to form words and speak intelligibly.

But at this rate I'll probably lose that function in another six months to a year.

I can't lift my arms and I can't stand up, so what will happen to me?

My muscles will atrophy and I won't be able to move at all.

I'll be locked in.

But I assure you, my brain is fully functional and my brain wants to do things my body can't anymore.

I don't wanna rely on somebody else a hundred percent of the time.

So for me, autonomy is critical to my mental wellbeing.

And I wanna build devices that keep me and many other people with disabilities independent as long as possible.

(ambient music) So I'll be right back.

- Okay.

- I lost power.

Come on.

Can you just turn this?

- Just to turn on?

- Yeah.

Back in 2017, I was coaching girls softball, but at a tournament the girls kept asking me to throw the ball harder or hit the ball harder.

And I was thinking to myself, "Something's wrong."

I'm not able to do what I could do previously.

It was determined that I had a motor neurone disorder commonly known as ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease.

ALS is a fatal disease with no treatment and no cure.

That's a pretty sobering diagnosis and prognosis.

What it meant for me was a complete change in my life's goals.

My career was in creating sports videos using artificial intelligence to control cameras.

But with the diagnosis, things had to change.

I still want to use computer-aided design to build products.

I still want to write code.

A lot of the products available for people with disabilities are heavily infantilized.

- [Instructor] And they're color coded, so the blue would go with the blue switch.

So you operate the blue switch and it would turn on your light.

- I was shocked by how little progress had been made.

Turning back to the work I'd done with cameras, I quickly realized AI and robotics are the solution.

We call this device on my head, Cato.

Cato is a small motion sensor that can be trained on different movements and gestures.

We've decided to train it to act as a computer mouse so that as I move my head around, the mouse will follow me.

Tilt right, tilt left, different commands, that's easy.

Somebody else might want to use the device in different ways.

- [Speaker 1] Can y'all hear me?

- [Speaker 2] Yup.

- How about if I do the training with both Abby and Ava there, and that way we can get them both up to speed.

When we start working with a person, the first thing we do is figure out what gestures they can make repeatedly.

Does your hands work pretty well?

- Yeah, I can, yeah.

- We take those movements and we create a personalized device.

The ability to create one-off products, it's a very expensive capability until AI can do a lot of that work.

And we're just getting there.

The tech is just now getting good enough that it can be used to make something for one person affordably.

And we don't have to be Tony Stark and we don't need to fly, but if we can walk and use our limbs a little longer, we can dramatically reduce the cost of care and maintain independence.

Thanks for joining on the call.

The focus today is on the long-term roadmap for Auli Tech.

Speech, eating, moving, and transfers and hygiene.

Give up autonomous living?

I haven't.

You know, that's in your head.

Living autonomously, it's a credo.

It's my personality.

There's a old song by Jim Croce that has the words, "Stone walls do not a prison make, or iron bars a cage," but that's how I think.

It's only the barriers you put on yourself that cage you in.

We got to pick our shots because I know I've got finite time and I'm fiercely independent.

So I'll be a stubborn, ornery person as long as I can.

And away we go.

(object clattering) It's okay.