Ekso

BACKGROUND

Tell me about your business and your role within the organization?

I’m a Senior Firmware Engineer with EKSO Bionics. We’re a robotics company, and our main product line is an exoskeleton with two legs used in therapy situations for rehabilitating stroke victims, as well as walking physical therapy for paraplegics. The device has the ability to completely walk for people or provide as much assistance as that person needs. There are a lot of complex robotic controls.

OPPORTUNITY

What challenges were you trying to address by using FullStack Labs?

FullStack Labs helps us with an extensive recording system that sends data to the cloud for two purposes. One is to present data to our customers like how many steps they’ve taken, how fast they were going, how much assistance they needed, etc. The other is very detailed error logging and engineering machine data that we can use to remotely diagnose our devices. The legs are quite bulky and expensive to ship so when we can do remote diagnostics we can fix customer’s problems more quickly and reduce costs.

SOLUTION

What is the scope of our involvement?

It’s an IoT system. We started this project in our early days in 2012. Today, you might buy a system off the shelf but because we were pioneers, we created our own. We have a customer portal which we call Pulse, for which FullStack Labs is responsible; we also have an embedded black box recorder that has cloud connectivity, which was my responsibility with Android running on the original data logger. It’s gone through several generations. In between the customer portal and the device is a web service running on AWS. Now we have a new generation of the data logger where we do the software mostly in-house. FullStack Labs is responsible for the two cloud components, the AWS server and the Pulse customer portal.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with Ivan Ardila, Edgar Ortega, and Brian Smith as developers. Edgar is the main guy working on our AWS server. We’ve also occasionally worked with FullStack Labs designers, including the other Brian Smith! All have been great to work with. I’ve worked with other consultants of varying quality, so I know the difference between someone who’s good and someone who’s not. FullStack Labs is at the top of the list. They rank up there with the best, and I say that having worked as a consultant. I understand both sides of the consulting business, being one and working with one, and I’ve come to know when people are not being direct with me. Working with Ivan and his team has been smooth as silk and we really get along as well. It’s great to have that personal connection and it’s been very easy to establish that with the team.

How did you come to work with FullStack Labs?

It was taking a long time to get the Pulse customer portal released. We had a developer working on it who just wasn’t reliable and had beta versions that were always buggy. My supervisor went out and found FullStack Labs. We were looking for a company with a lot of different skills which is implied by the FullStack Labs name! We also liked that they were local. It’s a security blanket to have somebody relatively close, even though they work very effectively remotely.

How much time have you invested with them?

Our work together started in 2016 and is ongoing.

What is the status of this engagement?

Version 2.0 of the Pulse customer portal is live featuring more graphical data to enhance the presentation. We also had an upgrade where we created a new data stream to provide more visibility for our clients to see their patient’s statistics. We’ve also had several maintenance releases along the way. In addition, we’re now in a design phase to add more functionality for administrative purposes, the manager view of the data. We also just performed a major overhaul where we updated all the components stored on our Amazon web server and we’re working to get that released.

How much longer do you see the engagement going?

We'll have a maintenance relationship for as long as the product is in use. There are so many moving pieces that require the expertise FullStack Labs provides.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Customers who used Pulse 2.0 have had a very positive response to the user interface and the new datastream as well. It’s helped us increase the usage of Pulse which gives us more information on the use of the robot.

How did FullStack Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

FullStack Labs is very flexible about working with us as specs change on the fly. That’s one of the positive aspects of our relationship that keeps us moving forward.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The flexibility and breadth of FullStack Lab's capabilities and skills holds true to the company name. FullStack Labs covers the full range of tools and software components. The developers are super productive and efficient. They have very reasonable rates, but also get things done in a reasonable number of hours which makes it very economical.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not really any areas of improvement that I can think of.