Startup Parrots is using 5G to develop a bird-shaped, AI-powered machine that helps people with disabilities communicate

• Polly, a hardware and software service, helps people with disabilities live more independently.
• Parrots' founder is in talks with the VA to give Polly to veterans with neurological disorders.

David Hojah, the founder of the startup Parrots Inc., is using low-latency 5G wireless connectivity to help people with disabilities communicate and live more independently.

The Boston native has been an inventor since he was a kid. His first projects included fixing his TV and toys, but Hojah's curiosity mounted when he saw how much room there was for technology to make an impact in medicine. His uncle suffered a spinal-cord injury and was severely disabled. Later, one of his aunts died from complications related to multiple sclerosis. While Hojah was a student at Harvard University, his friend was diagnosed with ALS, aka Lou Gehrig's disease. Both of those conditions can limit movement and motor skills.

Hojah recognized that robotics and machine learning, when paired with 5G, had the capability to create natural communication in real time for people with disabilities who otherwise had few options to achieve that.

"Accessible technology allows millions of disabled people to unlock their potential so that they're not isolated and can share their powers and abilities. This technology doesn't just help them — it helps everyone," Hojah told Insider.

Hojah's solution is Polly, a combination of hardware and cloud-based software that he describes as "an assistive AI parrot on your proverbial shoulder." It's an oblong, bird-shaped camera that can grip onto any wheelchair and provide a 360-degree view. With an accompanying tablet, Polly uses eye movements from the user to confirm or deny predicted sentences that appear on the screen to indicate what the user may want or need in a given moment. Eye movements can also create sentences for vocalization. While eye-movement-based communication isn't new, Parrots is applying it in different ways and combining it with other emerging technologies.

Polly's rapid predictions are based on computer vision and a set of continuously gathered contextual analytics that are specific to the user. Additional data points, like a user's vital signs, are processed alongside this contextual data rapidly in the cloud so that users can receive accurate predictions in real time.

From all those inputs, Polly can predict actions a user wants to take, like switching the temperature in their room, opening their door, moving in their wheelchair, or responding verbally to a visiting family member with the technology.

With a 5G connection, this analysis is fast enough to respond in real time. Hojah acknowledged that Parrots could have taken flight without 5G but said the timeline would have been much slower: "5G is expanding our growth rapidly."

"It's unlocking more for us to enhance the existing technology, add more features, and reduce the cost for users and healthcare systems," he added.

In 2019, Parrots won Verizon's Built on 5G Challenge, and Hojah got mentorship and technological assistance from the wireless-telecommunications giant.

One of the major perks of 5G is it has minimized the hardware investment required to process the immense amount of data gathered by Polly. While 5G has benefited the bottom line, it's also opened up the bandwidth of the company to focus more on the capabilities that the technology has, Hojah said.

The system uses these data points, predictions, and confirmations from the user to get to meticulously know the person using the technology, and even those nearby.

"If a person is next to you, the system is predicting whether they're a friend or family member," Hojah said. "That's because you need a holistic understanding of the user to know what's really happening in a moment."

Polly can also function as a behavioral assistant since it has the ability to monitor and check in continually on patients with medical conditions that require around-the-clock care. It has features like an alarm system for emergencies. For example, if a patient is choking or falling from their bed and needs help, the alarm will go off. Since Polly can communicate on behalf of patients in emergencies, it creates more independence for them to go about their daily lives without constant monitoring by a caregiver.

The first generation of Polly resides at the Leonard Florence Center for Living in Chelsea, Massachusetts, with another product on the way to the Steve Gleason Institute for Neuroscience in Washington state. Parrots is in the process of launching a second generation of Polly, which it hopes will expand the types of patients who can use the product, like those with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

In the meantime, Hojah is hard at work getting Polly covered by public and private insurance companies. He's also in talks with the Veterans Health Administration to provide Polly devices to veterans living with neurological disorders at Department of Veterans Affairs clinics.

For now, Hojah is focused on closing seed venture-capital funding rounds, solidifying the team, and securing the partnership with the VA.

"We want this to be affordable because people with disabilities need this technology," he said. "We're going to do whatever we can to make it accessible."