ATU684 – MouthPad with Corten Singer

Hi, this is Corten Singer, and I’m the co-founder and president of Augmental, and this is your Assistive 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 684 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on July 5, 2024. On today’s show, we are super excited to welcome Corten Singer, co-founder of Augmental to the show, and he’s here to tell us all about their new access device called the MouthPad. As always, listeners, don’t forget, we always love to hear from you. You can give us a call on our listener line at 317-721-7124, or shoot us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. We always love your feedback as we look at guest to have on the show, things to talk about or comments, compliments, complaints, we’ll take it all. We just love to know that you’re out there and always want to try to improve the show and make it even better for our listeners.

So without any further ado, let’s go ahead and get on with the show. Folks, we cannot thank you enough for giving us a listen here at Assistive Technology Update. Without you, we would not have been around for coming up on getting pretty darn close to that 700 episode mark. But did you know this is not the only podcast that we have? You can also check out our sister show, Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions. This show comes out once a month, and it features panelists Belva Smith, Brian Norton and myself as we try to answer the questions that are plaguing your mind about assistive technology. We gather of all the questions we get during the month from emails, phone calls and many other means, and then we do our best to answer them. But I got to tell you, folks, believe it or not, we do not know everything. So we rely on our listeners a lot to reach out to us and give us some of those answers or maybe just talk about their personal experiences and things that have happened to them.

So if you’d like Assistive Technology Update, you may very well love Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions. Again, it’s Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions where you can get your questions about assistive technology answered. Or if you happen to have the answers to some of the questions asked on that show, please, please do reach out and let us know so that we can help the community with the answers that they so desperately seek. Much like Assistive Technology Update, you can find Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions wherever you prefer to get your podcast. As always, listeners, thank you for listening. Listeners, alternative input methods are incredibly important to allow individuals with mobility impairments to access technology, communication, activities of daily living and so many other things in life. Well, our guest today is Corten Singer, co-founder of Augmental, the creators of the MouthPad. He’s here to tell us all about how this device can allow access with fine motor skills of a muscle usually reserved for other things like talking the tongue. Corten, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to just be able to share a bit about the work that we’re doing and spread the word to let folks know that this solution is out there on the market and available.

Yeah, and I am excited to learn more for me personally and then for our listeners as well. Corten, before we get into talking about the technology, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, I’m happy to. So my name is Corten Singer. I’m originally from San Diego, California, so coming from Southern California while currently we are based in San Francisco, a little bit in the Northern to Central California side of things. We are based here, but my co-founder and I actually met just on the other side of the Bay Bridge out in UC Berkeley. We were there studying both computer science and cognitive science, so learning how the human system works, at the same time learning how computer systems work. So we were naturally placed at that intersection where the field of human computer interaction exists. In particular, I and my co-founder shared an interest in specifically alternative input modalities; not just your traditional human computer interaction, but looking at other ways to provide inputs to computer interfaces so that we can leverage existing abilities from folks who don’t generally have access to traditional input devices like perhaps a mouse or a keyboard, something that really depends on fine hand motor skill that not all of us have.

Just to bring that back to where we are today, as we started getting a lot more interested into these alternative input modalities, we pursued higher education, both did our master’s, but then after finishing school, just realized that the tongue and the mouth was an untapped opportunity to leverage unique and alternative abilities for computer input that we’re still providing a universal access method. Particularly for folks who live with spinal cord injury from the neck down and quadriplegia that prevents control of the extremities, oftentimes, however, the mouth and tongue are left intact. So this was an opportunity to explore something that we see as a powerful extremity at the same time tapping into a solution that more people can have access to than, I don’t know, a standard hand-based option.

Oh, sure. It gives you just so much more control, I feel like, than some other options. Switch scanning and things can get a little cumbersome and can be a little bit harder than just depending on just how much movement you have left in certain parts that you can control well can really make a difference. So I guess you led me straight into my next question. So just on to the tech, what is the MouthPad?

Yeah. So essentially, the MouthPad is a re-imagination of the computer mouse. At the high level we see that the hand-based input paradigm has really dominated the space of human computer interaction. You can really see this coming from the ’60s when the computer mouse was invented, and we’ve seen some innovation with our technology, for sure, but we haven’t really seen much of a change in how we interact with that technology. So when I talk about change, you can think of computers. When they first started, they were huge mainframe rooms essentially dedicated to one computer, and you could have physical cables plugging in, and it was this really big apparatus, and times have changed. It went to a desktop computer after that for a slightly more personalized computing experience.

Than it went to a laptop so that you could really have that computer with you anywhere you go. Now we have smartphones in our pockets. We got smart computers on our wrists and even smart buds in our ears. This is speaking towards this trend in computer interaction that will move towards a more seamless integration with the human form. At the furthest extreme, you can see brain computer interface implant companies, you can think of the neural links and more surgically-invasive solutions. While I think that those are really actually amazing solutions, they’re at the end of that spectrum that really just takes a lot of time to get to. I think years, maybe decades in the future, those solutions will be a little bit more available, but our solution comes today.

So to ground that in what this product actually is, we have created a new take on the computer mouse. This is an intraoral that is in-mouth wearable device. You can think of it similar to a smart version of an Invisalign dental retainer or aligner, if you will. With this version, instead of just having the 3D-printed dental resin, we actually have smart electronics embedded inside. So what this does is it makes the intraoral wearable a smart computer interface that is basically the laptop trackpad that we have on our computers outfitted into the smaller form factor that rests on the roof of your mouth. So in this way, the roof of your mouth becomes the trackpad that is otherwise normally on your laptop surface.

So instead of your finger traversing across the trackpad and pressing for clicks, your tongue serves that function. So you use your tongue across the roof of your mouth to provide cursor input. This is requiring no pressure, just that slight contact. Then you can use your tongue to provide click-based input in the way that you would with your finger by actually providing that pressure, pressing a little bit more. In this way you have every function that is provided by an off-the-shelf computer mouse, but in this time or in this way, it’s actually controlled completely by your mouth and your tongue. So I actually have a couple of different features or modalities I can describe. But before getting ahead of myself, I wanted to just let you comment or perhaps ask any other questions that might get us to a different direction.

No, I was going to say you can go on with that. I did just want to let the listeners know, since I’ve been preparing for this, I must admit even just using my trackpad or anything on my computer, I was thinking how much training does it take? How hard is this to use? But then in just moving my tongue across the top of my mouth, I was like, it’s actually intuitive. Not that I was using the MouthPad or anything, but I could actually… all the movements, little clicks, things like that, it’s not that hard. So I assumed that the training or the ramping up to be a user is actually pretty quick.

Yeah. This is what got me initially really excited about this project is. As I started thinking more and more about the tongue and given the background I have in cognitive science, my co-founder and I, we’ve learned that the brain dedicates a disproportionately large amount of neurons specifically to the tongue. This is both for the tongue to understand where its position is, but also to be really good at moving to the location that you want. You can think of this as sometimes if you got a little bit of food in your teeth, your tongue knows exactly where that is and it can really pinpoint it. But when you try to actually get to it with flosser or your finger, it’s now all of a sudden really difficult to find where it is, but your tongue knows.

Similarly, as I’m speaking to you even, my tongue is making these pretty remarkably precise and crazy complex movements, and it’s jumping all around the mouth without really much effort on my end. So to that end, we have what we call the 11th finger because of how capable and powerful the tongue really is. It’s got this innate dexterity similar only to really the fingers that we have in our hands. So to that end, we got really excited about starting here because we do know that learning new technology is always a little bit of a challenge. It’s new, it’s different, but for those of us who are verbal, the tongue is already trained and ready to go. So when we do have training sessions, we find that maybe within about 10 minutes people are already controlling their computer or their phone with their tongue and it’s not too challenging.

But even beyond that, I think one detail I’d love to just call out and share about the MouthPad is our vision on what we see that we’re building, not just for right now, but what’s also coming. So I’ve described a bit about how we are re-imagining the computer mouse, but this is just the first step. We wanted to help folks from, I don’t know, the most extreme cases of interaction who really have difficulty using traditional interfaces and even using the available assistive interfaces. So we started off with tongue-based cursor control to provide an option for those who might not even have neck motion to use the head-based or chin-based joysticks that are available on the market. But since then, since providing that very baseline functionality, we’ve also started to expand because our philosophy is really to make human-first technology. We’ve seen up until today that the computer itself and the form factor itself really defines the interaction experience.

You can think of this as going to the computer room or going to the desktop or perhaps for many of our customers in a wheelchair, getting set up in their wheelchair set up so that they can then have that baseline access to their interfaces and thus, their digital devices. So this is really a case of the technology and the form factor determining the context and the user experience. What we want is to create technology that’s human first, that meets us where we are at the level of input we find most suitable regardless of the context. So what this means to me is being able to use your technology when lying in bed, when otherwise you have difficulty accessing technology or are otherwise stranded. This also technically means that it allows for just more convenient, I guess, use of technology; technology that can connect to any device, not just a computer that is old enough to connect to these under-intubated technologies.

Having ability to connect to your smartphone out of the box or your tablet or your computer, anything with a Bluetooth chip, these are things that just make sense to meet us again where we are at the device that we want to use, at the level of input we want to use. So to that end, wrapping up that philosophical spiel, our second feature that we provide is head-based cursor control. So this is essentially head tracking so that you can use movements of the head to the left, to the right, up or down to provide that cursor input. This essentially provides a greater range of input motion that can create a faster and more intuitive interaction experience than just that baseline tongue input. So this is, again, in line with creating multiple forms of input so that you can choose which level of input is best for your context or just for the moment. Even beyond that, the very last detail I’ll add, ’cause I know I’m going in, and I can get really excited about our technology, is what we have cooking in the future.

This is nothing that we have released officially or publicly yet, but just in the same way we’ve reinvented the computer mouse, we also want to reinvent the keyboard. We see a lot of value springing up with LLMs and AI chatbots, these conversational computer tools that really now have the issue of input. Are we going to always be typing sentences or paragraphs through a keyboard to these chatbots, or will we need a better way to start leveraging our voices? Voice-based inputs are also really powerful for this customer segment who need hands-free technology, but there’s a couple of drawbacks with voice and speech-based systems. They’re not private, they’re quite loud, and they’re also just not perfect. If it’s a loud environment, sometimes it’s hard to be heard or if it’s a quiet environment, you’re just disrupting others around you and not getting to enjoy that privacy that you might want. So to that end, the next feature we have in the works that we’re really excited about is to incorporate speech into our device as well.

Nice.

This will allow our users to be able to speak with more privacy because we also want to support not just low volume and whisper-based speech, but eventually, completely silent speech input. You can think of that as electronic lipreading, if you will. But for now, I’ll just leave that as a tease of what’s to come because we’re actually quite excited about it. But for now we’re just working on that functionality of the computer mouse, not the keyboard yet. However, that is where we’re going to be heading soon.

No, that would make such a big difference, ’cause I know a lot of folks that even use maybe even their voice to control the whole computer, there’s always just certain things it doesn’t do well. It won’t click on certain things. Like you said, we do a lot of workplace accommodations, and if you’re working in a, oh, medical office and inputting stuff, you can’t just yell out people’s Social Security numbers and medical diagnoses while you’re there in the middle of the-

Right.

… while other people are waiting. So having a tool where you could be able to get that out, either a whisper or eventually, yeah, I think it would be great if you could just mouth it and get that stuff in there. So that’s awesome. I love that you’re not stopping where you are, but continuing to move it on forward. So Corten, tell me about battery life or how it charges and those kind of things.

Yeah, that is a great question about usability. Currently, with our earliest product offering that has not been power optimized, our batteries last about five to six hours in a full session. We want to optimize this power so that we can provide eight hours and more of-

Oh, nice.

… full functionality so that we can support full days of work. But until now, we have, again, about five to six hours of continuous use. Once done, the MouthPad can be placed back in its case, which doubles, actually, as its charging station, so-

Oh, nice.

… you can carry it with this charging case, but at the same time, consider it similar to your Smart Buds or your AirPods type of charging in which it’s a carrying case. You just plug in your cable. After about an hour or so, potentially an hour and a half of charge, you’ll have a fully-charged device.

Awesome. Well, I know we’re getting close on time, but still have a little bit here, so I guess I have to ask, do you have maybe some stories or maybe some other information, some feedback you got from some early adopters and maybe testers or folks that have used MouthPad what they thought or how it was able to help them?

Yeah, we do have some stories. We actually have a really exciting piece that was just produced and finished by the BBC StoryWorks. We actually have this on our website. I’m happy to even share about stories just verbally, but for folks who would love to even get a closer look at really how the MouthPad changes someone’s life, what it looks like, what it does on the day-to-day schedule change as someone has lived with and without a device, I’d really encourage and recommend you check out our website. If you go to www.augmental.tech, that is A-U-G-M-E-N-T-A-L.T-E-C-H, we have a lot more information about the product. You can see pictures, but right at the first landing page, you’ll see a video. This is a great feature to give you a really closer look on how the MouthPad can change someone’s life.

This is a case of, for example, our youngest and first customer. She is a college student who wants to be an engineer, and her previous assistive technology was just leaving a lot to be desired. Now that she has the MouthPad, it really opens a lot of doors and restores a lot of independence and freedom back to her life. So this is the general trend we see with a lot of our users. Beyond this individual, Keely, we don’t have many video features of our other users. We have a couple from recent interviews that we’ll start getting up online for others to view, but generally, we find our users have experienced these new layers of freedom, essentially, this independence.

Whether it’s being able to work in silence or quietly in a public working space like a library such as our student, Keely, or just being able to have that ease of control when in bed, when in non-traditional computing contexts from some of our other users, we find that leisure with their toddler is a lot easier. Previous assistive technology is quite bulky and it is a pretty big setup, so it prevents them from having their child on their lap while using their assistive technology to swipe through pages and read a story. Now with the MouthPad, they have a very lightweight form factor that is only within the mouth, so you have no obstruction both to your face and your emotional expression, but also just on your person so that you can hold your child without that clunky hardware. Another case follows RockyNoHands. He is the actual first quadriplegic eGamer to be picked up on a professional eGaming team-

Nice.

… and he uses a quad stick device, which many of our customers are familiar with. But for those who aren’t, this is a single chin-lip joystick that has a couple of buttons and sip-and-puff straws, and he has become extremely adequate. He’s a professional at this tool. He is a rock star and is able to really play at a high competitive level. However, he only has one joystick input, and we gave him our device to have two essential analog-

Nice.

… inputs at the same time. So he was using his tongue while at the same time controlling the joystick with his chin and lips, and so a crazy combination. But he was really capable at having years spent using his mouth-based controller that this was almost a no-brainer, and right away, he’s able to hop online and wipe out opponent teams with his new tool set. So I can go on and on, but really the idea that, I guess, I want to express is this is a generalist tool. It allows you to have access to really all of your digital devices that have a screen and a Bluetooth chip. With that, you can’t really do anything. Whether that’s work, leisure, music, call your family, or your loved ones, it’s up to you, and we just want to provide that access and that opportunity so that our customers can choose to live their life as they see fit.

That is awesome. Corten, you mentioned the website there. Real quick, is that the best way to get more information or to even order your own MouthPad?

Yeah, that is a great point. I did mention the website to get more information and see some videos, but this is also the great entry point for hopping onto our wait list and getting in line essentially for your MouthPad. If you go to our website, again, that is www.A-U-G-M-E-N-T-A-L.T-E-C-H. That’s augmental.tech. You’ll see not just that information, but a tab to sign up for our wait list. There you can input your personal information. We encourage you to share if you are interested in this device as an assistive technology. If you live with some level of disability, we’d love to know as we tend to prioritize those customers on the wait list. But yeah, feel free to sign up there, or you can reach our contact page and shoot us an email if you have any question whatsoever.

Awesome. We’ll put that down in the show notes to make it even easier for folks to find. Corten, we could probably talk forever about all the great things, but we’ll definitely encourage folks to jump on the website, check everything out and get on that wait list if they can is they’re interested, ’cause this sounds like an amazing tool and really just, especially if you’re doing it people first and just making sure that they actually have the access methods to do what they really do want to do. We’re excited to see where it all goes here in the future, so thank you so much for coming on the show and telling us all about it.

Yeah, no, thank you, Josh. I really appreciate it. Really, it’s my pleasure to be able to evangelize a little bit and spread the word about what we’re doing. For any listeners who are interested, yeah, you also have the option to just sign up to our email list as well and follow us on social media just so that you can also get a closer look as to how we’re progressing. But again, it was a privilege to be able to share my story. Thank you so much, Josh, and yeah, I hope you have a good rest of the day.

Awesome, and you too. Thank you so much. 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 at INDATA Project. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation, or INTRAC. You can find out more about INTAC at relayindiana.com. A special thanks to Nikol Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show is 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, our supporting partners or this host. This was Assistive Technology Update. 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.