Overview of Assistive Technology Development, Inc. (ATDev)

RAMMP (Robotic Assistive Mobility and Manipulation Platform) is an open-source robotic wheelchair built around a simple idea: the person in the chair should get to decide how much help they want, and when. Today’s powered wheelchairs treat their user as a passenger. They move, but they cannot see the world, cannot reach a shelf, cannot open a door, and have not meaningfully changed in decades. For most users that means depending on someone else for the parts of the day a chair should be able to handle on its own. Getting a glass of water, picking up a dropped phone, crossing an uneven sidewalk, and moving through a doorway all become tasks that require asking.
RAMMP is designed to hand those moments back. It carries a robotic arm and enough awareness of its surroundings to help with everyday reaching and navigation, and it lets the user dial the assistance up or down in the moment: full manual control when they want it, a steadier hand on rough ground or in tight spaces when they want that, and near-autonomous help with a task when their hands or energy are limited. The point is not to take over. It is to remove the small, constant negotiations with other people that most wheelchair users would rather not have, and to let someone do more of their own day themselves.

Innovation: The power wheelchair is the one robot already in millions of homes, operated roughly 16 hours a day, already reimbursed, and carrying no intelligence layer. RAMMP, the federally funded ARPA-H program ATDev helps lead, builds that layer by integrating robotics, AI, and computer vision in one platform: a robotic mobility base, a dynamic seating platform, a wheelchair-mounted manipulator, and a computer-vision suite designed to perform the semantic environmental classification no commercial wheelchair does today. AI-driven shared autonomy lets base, seat, and arm coordinate so the user is not forced to switch control modes between driving and reaching, a documented source of fatigue. Integrating robotic mobility and manipulation as one system has not been done before; prior work treated navigation, seating, and manipulation in isolation. An open-source operating system, released under Apache 2.0, breaks decades of proprietary lock-in.
Impact: The beneficiaries are not a niche population: everyone living with a disability and an aging population that increasingly needs help with daily living. That need is outrunning supply. Medicaid alone paid $122.7 billion for personal care services from 2018 to 2024, the single largest service code in the more than $1 trillion of claims analyzed, and nearly triple its 2018 level. The workforce meant to deliver that care is thin: home health aides earn a median of about $15.12 an hour, annual turnover exceeds 60%, and the country will need an estimated 8.2 million direct-care workers by 2030 with no path to reach them. RAMMP, backed by a $41 million ARPA-H award, is built to offload exactly these daily tasks and restore independence for the 41% of long-term-care users who need help with at least one daily activity.

The primary beneficiaries are people with mobility disabilities who rely on powered wheelchairs, and their caregivers. In the United States, an estimated 3.3 million people use powered wheelchairs, a number that is growing as the population ages. They are the immediate audience for a far larger opportunity: more than 60 million Americans, roughly one in four adults, live with a disability, and the fastest-growing group is older adults who need daily mobility and caregiving support. Keeping that population living independently at home, rather than in higher-cost institutional care, is a multi-trillion-dollar homecare opportunity that grows every year the population ages. RAMMP is designed for users with the most significant mobility restrictions, who need the most capable systems and are least served by today’s market. Secondary beneficiaries are the assistive-technology research and developer community, who gain an open platform (ATOS) to build on, and clinicians, who gain data and simulation tools for assessment, fitting, and remote care.

RAMMP is already built by a consortium: the University of Pittsburgh (prime, PI Dr. Rory Cooper), Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Northeastern, and Purdue, with industry partners ATDev, Kinova Robotics, and LUCI Mobility. ATDev welcomes collaboration in five areas:
AI and robotics research groups contributing to open perception, shared autonomy, and manipulation on ATOS.
Wheelchair manufacturers and mobility companies adopting or piloting the open wheelchair interface.
Clinical and rehabilitation partners for user research, testing, and reimbursement evidence.
Funders and strategic partners supporting commercialization and technology transfer.
Members of the disability community as design partners and testers.
Through the Innovation Gateway specifically, ATDev is most interested in connections to funders, disability-serving organizations, and technical or clinical partners aligned with independent living.

ATDev will raise an equity round in 2026 to support commercialization of RAMMP technologies. To learn more please reach out to pkent@disabledlifealliance.com