The City Wire Business of the Month: Alma-based Invotek

Editor’s note: The City Wire highlights each month a business operating in the Fort Smith region. Business struggles, accomplishments, philanthropic support and many factors are considered when selecting a business to profile. Input from The City Wire readers also will be considered.

story and photos by Roy Hill

The house at 1026 Riverview Drive in Alma looks like just another nice home with a matching outbuilding, nestled in a well-manicured, upscale sub-division in the hills east of Alma: edged lawns, landscaping, curved driveway, with a neat pen for a friendly yellow Labrador named Forrest.

But inside is InvoTek, a cutting-edge, high-tech, research-oriented company devoted to finding new ways for people with profound disabilities to communicate and interact using technology.

“We’re working on new ways for people with severe disabilities to access computers, surf the web, read the paper, facebook, or even go to school,” Jakobs said.

One River Valley area client of InvoTek is using their products to take online classes at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Tom Jakobs, with degrees in bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago and in theology from St. Gregory University, started InvoTek 21 years ago with a vision to help others. Today, his business card reads "Compassion Driven Innovations" underneath the company logo.

“It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Jakobs said. “It’s been the most rewarding thing, and the most frustrating thing. Some days I look at what we’ve done and feel proud. On other days, we think it’s just not good enough and that we have to do better.”

Eight employees work at achieving InvoTek’s mission statement, and making their technological products even better, including the Accupoint head tracker. The tracker monitors the movement of a small wireless device that attaches to a person’s forehead, allowing him or her to use a computer without the use of arms or hands.

Andrea Horton of Little Rock, an InvoTek engineer working on a graduate degree in computer engineering at the University of Arkansas, demonstrated the head tracker. She was able to use an on-screen keyboard, surf the web, and access programs by merely moving her head a little, and pausing the head tracker cursor on key spots on the computer screen. When she turned her head away from the screen and then back again, the cursor came back onto the screen exactly in line with her head.

“That’s called ‘absolute tracking’ and is really a big deal,” Jakobs said. “It means that the head tracker really knows where you are. Absolute tracking gives people with severe disabilities a way to get into the computer, and really increases efficiency.”

Six years ago, InvoTek’s work on the device earned them a $500,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to further develop and enhance the Accupoint head tracker, part of a set of such grants totaling $1.95 million at that time.

“We’re really good at research and development work but haven’t been as successful at marketing,” Jakobs said. “In the mid-1990’s, we refocused back at R&D and got more heavily involved with SBIR. We’ve had about $4 million in grants working on several different technologies. We also do a lot of SBIR work with Arkansas State University.”

In addition to ASU, InvoTek has established connections with several other university research centers, including Duke, University at Buffalo, Penn State, and the University of Nebraska.

“It’s a big feather in our cap,” Jakobs said, “for such a small group in Arkansas to be collaborating with a large diversity of institutions and a lot of good researchers in our area of specialization.”

Besides the Accupoint head tracker, InvoTek is also developing several other technologies to assist the disabled.

One is a laser-sensitive keyboard that could help a person spell out words with an eye-safe laser. Jakobs showed a video of a stroke survivor with locked-in syndrome who became able to communicate using a head-mounted laser and a keyboard. Another segment of the video showed a patient largely paralyzed by myasthenia gravis, who could still use a laser attached to his big toe to spell out words and communicate.

Project Engineer Barret Ewing of Alma, with a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Arkansas, is working on the keyboard.

"Compared to the head tracker, this is a simpler device to control," Ewing said. "It’s basic communication and a stand-alone system. The keyboard could be hooked into a computer for more functionality some day. But the next step we’re working on is text-to-speech and word prediction. It won’t access a computer like the head tracker."

Another project is a speech recognition program for people with severe speech problems.

"We’re working on dysarthric speech recognition with the Oregon Health and Sciences University Center for Spoken Language Understanding," Jakobs said.

There is also a computer software program that will help people affected with aphasia, typically brought on by a stroke or severe brain injury, to communicate by touching a computer screen.

But InvoTek doesn’t just work on software and programs. They manufacture as much of the hardware as they can in a machine shop downstairs from the tech center. The shop houses a microscope, a manufacturing robot and a CNC machine.

"We try to build everything," Jakobs said. "The market we are in is fairly small, so we build our own prototypes. Barret Ewing built a vacuum former with his dad so we can form plastics now."

Product Manager Jerry Russell, the former Director of Maintenance at TAC Air at the Fort Smith airport, makes many of the circuit boards that go into InvoTek products.

"At the end of my mechanic’s life, Cessna brought out several aircraft with complicated circuit boards," Russell said. "And I can now use my knowledge and experience in a new environment."

Jakobs’ son Erik also works as a software writer and Systems Tester. Having just completed a bachelor’s degree in physics from Hendrix College, Erik tests software and hardware, and provides technical support for the InvoTek Evaluation Team.

InvoTek is completely a Jakobs’ family affair, as Tom’s wife Diane also works as the grants manager and book keeper for the company on weekends. The rest of the week, she puts her doctorate in applied mechanics to work at Rheem where she is a principal engineer in Advanced Research and Development.

"Diane has enabled me to do the work I do," Jakobs said. "She’s the most dedicated to InvoTek. She’s given up her weekends for this for 20 years."

In keeping with his vision for the company, Jakobs said InvoTek has collaborated with several Arkansas-based service providers for people with disabilities, including the Gregory Kistler Treatment Center for Children, the Arkansas Spinal Cord Commission and the Benton County Sunshine School.

"Each of our employees spends time with people with disabilities," Jakobs said. "We are in the process of making assistive devices more available. An Accupoint costs about $1,500, but we’re presently working with the Arkansas Spinal Cord Commission to make the Accupoint head tracker available for $39 a month."

Continuing, Jakobs noted: "We’re just a small group. … But we hope to make a difference for people."