A Power Wheelchair That Feeds You, Opens Doors, and Learns From Other Chairs

Key points

• ATDev, based in Orange, California, is developing a powered wheelchair with a built-in robotic arm that can help users eat, drink, and open doors.
• The project is funded through ARPA-H, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, a US federal agency, and led by the University of Pittsburgh.
• Roughly 3.5 million Americans currently use powered wheelchairs, according to ATDev.
• ATDev is working with Meta to apply Meta's open-source AI models to the chair's software.
• The company expects to have an FDA-approved, insurance-covered chair available within five years.

Ower Kent has used a power wheelchair his entire life. Thirty-plus years of watching phones, cars, and medical imaging get smarter, while the chair itself stayed largely the same.

"Every phone that you've ever had has more computing power than any wheelchair has ever had," Kent, who founded ATDev and serves as its chief marketing officer, told The Robot Report.

His company wants to fix that.

What does this wheelchair actually do?

The core idea is a standard power wheelchair paired with a coordinated robotic arm, plus software that lets the two work together. The arm can pick up a fork, open a door, or flip a light switch. A user who cannot lift their arms can direct it through an app or a simple control interface.

The system is part of a federal programme called RAMMP, short for Robotic Assistive Mobility and Manipulation Platform. ARPA-H, a federal health research agency modelled loosely on DARPA (the defence agency famous for funding early internet research), is paying for the work. The University of Pittsburgh leads the broader consortium; ATDev is the industry partner building the chair itself.

ATDev is also planning a "teleoperation" feature: a user lying in bed could send the empty chair to the kitchen to retrieve a drink.

Is it safe enough to put near someone who cannot move away?

This is the hardest problem. If a robotic arm brings a fork toward the face of someone with full paralysis, there is no flinching out of the way if something goes wrong.

"There's a huge difference in the level of reliability and repeatability that you need if you're able to hit an e-stop or move out of the way," said Todd Roberts, co-founder and CEO, using the term e-stop to mean an emergency stop button, "or if you're not."

ATDev's answer is what the team calls "shared autonomy": the chair handles tiny moment-to-moment adjustments, but the user stays in charge of the big decisions. Think of it like cruise control, not a self-driving car. Users can also dial the level of AI assistance up or down in real time, a concept the company calls a "spectrum of autonomy".

What role does AI play?

ATDev is working with Meta to apply Meta's open-source AI models to the chair's software. The key task is helping the chair quickly map a new room, recognising furniture, doorways, and obstacles so it can move safely in an ordinary home.

The company is also planning a "federated learning" system. In plain terms: each chair learns from its owner's habits, and users can choose to share those learned tricks with other ATDev users through something resembling an app store. A technique one user figures out for navigating a tight kitchen could be downloaded by someone across the country.

All of the core software ATDev builds is open-source, meaning other developers can read, use, and improve it freely.

What happens next?

ATDev has no confirmed launch date. The company says a fully FDA-approved, insurance-reimbursable chair is roughly five years away. Before that, the team needs to agree on a regulatory path with the FDA, since no rules yet exist for a self-driving, arm-equipped personal mobility device.

The founders say the project has an unusual advantage: many of the researchers and lead scientists on RAMMP are wheelchair users themselves, giving them a direct say in every design choice.

Common questions

Who pays for this kind of device?

Right now, nobody does. No insurance category yet covers an autonomous robotic wheelchair. ATDev says reaching insurance reimbursement, alongside FDA approval, is its main commercial goal within the next five years.

Do you need to be fully paralysed to use it?

No. The "spectrum of autonomy" design means users with partial mobility can set the arm and the chair's AI to assist only where needed, leaving full control of everything else to the user.