John Beer

November is my wife’s birthday. We’ll probably make her favorite dinner, light us some candles, set the music right. Then she’s going to set me up with Obi, and leave us alone together. It’s this arrangement we’ve got. Obi’s a cute little unit, too, and treats me like I’m the only man in the world, even feeds me from its dish – yeah, “its,” because Obi is my eating device. (What’s going on in your mind?)

The Obi
(https://meetobi.com) is a robotic eating aid, and besides my wheelchair and van, the best thing I own. It’s true that robots will one day be our overlords, but they have to take baby steps first, like spoon feed me. So we need each other. It’s a long game Obi and I are playing, but I go along with it, because if you put good enough food in my mouth, I’m down with just about anything. You can call me Eggs Benedict Arnold.

I’m not a products and brands guy, but this is one I’m going to promote. The Obi is an important tool I want the disability community to know about. It is well-designed and well-supported, and it fosters a basic but vital act: independent eating. Soon we’ll celebrate my Obi’s birthday as well, three years old, and this is its report card. He’s been a very good boy.

The Obi is a simple yet savvy way to help people with disabilities to be themselves. That sounds cheesy, but eating is important, after all: you’ve gotta do it a few times a day. So it’s nice to be able to choose what and when you eat, or if you want to cut a break to your caregiver and yourself by eating independently, suddenly these choices are yours again.

Obi’s design is beautiful, not only non-institutional and pleasing to the eye (a young friend noticed Obi looks like Luxo Jr., the hopping lamp mascot at the beginnings of Pixar movies), but so easy to use. Here is a sophisticated machine that requires no time at all to learn and operate. It is a robotic arm with a spoon attached, mounted on a small platform (17” x 12” x 3”, and only 7.5 pounds) with a plastic tray overlay moulded with four bowls, and a pair of touch sensors for you. That’s it.

The sensors can be buttons, touchpads or any other switch needed. These can be placed on the table, in your lap, under your feet, wherever. One button moves the spoon from bowl to bowl, and the other tells it to scoop and feed. The robot even pushes food down to the middle of the bowl, and scrapes the spoon along the edge of the bowl to minimize dripping.

There are so many benefits here.

Without the Obi: Diner and caregiver in each other’s faces, bringing any moods from the day along with them. The last barnburner argument between my wife and me happened when she was feeding me. There’s just all kinds of opportunities for miscommunication in this simple transaction.

With the Obi: Blessed time apart, breathing space.

Without the Obi: Eating is a dependency relationship, even if a well-meaning one.

With the Obi: You feed yourself.

Without the Obi: Eating is sometimes rushed, with two separate minds at work, bringing the risk of choking or aspirating food.

With the Obi: Eating at one’s leisure, daydreaming or watching TV, or hey, burping without having to excuse yourself.

I’ve had MS so long I’ve got barnacles and am pretty much down to one arm with no finger movement. My interface with Obi is a pair of touchpads to swipe, which we set on my lap, bobby-pinned to a square of egg crate foam that won’t skate away from me. My wife fills the bowls, presses a Set button and then holds down a Memory button while she positions the spoon at its target, i.e., my big mouth. All done, and she’s off for some sweet solitude.

It’s the utter simplicity of this machine that’s still a wonder to us. No phonebook-sized manuals, only charge it and go. How can there be no manual? I’m picturing my father on Christmas mornings, performing some assembly required’ on go-karts and play kitchens, with my mother perched over his shoulder saying Nevermore, as he transformed from kindly Santa to cussing Homer Simpson before our eyes. Now, here’s this elegant Obi, that does so much more and is so much more important, and it’s (sigh) easy.

The Obi handles most foods, although you have to experiment because some dishes work better in the spoon than others. (I’ve posted on WheelieOutThere.blogspot.com a nitty-gritty of foods and workarounds for Obi.) Some meals go perfectly, while others you end up wearing on your sleeve quite literally. You have to wear a dinner napkin just in case, but you’re doing that already, aren’t you? A couple of dropped bits on your lap napkin is nothing for what you get here. This Obi gets the job done.

After three years, the thing still works like it came out of the box. Only once, three months in, the spoon somehow got hung up while digging in bowl number two, snapping off a plastic piece where the spoon mounted to the arm. I remember being slightly chuffed about the support available on the bare-bones website, and wrote to the email address provided.

The director of customer service was traveling at the time, but responded in no-time-flat. A couple of days later, I received not one replacement spoon but several, with simple printed instructions for making an easy but necessary adjustment. To be sure all went well, customer service set up a phone call with their tech vice president who helped develop the device. The design flaw never reappeared and it’s been smooth eating ever since. In that time I’ve used the Obi once or twice a day, with some days skipped, so I’m guessing 750-1100 meals.

The Obi costs real money – $5,950. I’ve not yet found the case where Medicare covers it, but Medicaid has covered at least one unit, in Missoula, Montana. Obi has just been listed with a federal GSA contract, to help get it to veterans. The manufacturer, Desin LLC, offers rental and lease-to-buy options, as well as other funding alternatives. My hope is that the more popular this quality device becomes, the more likely it gets picked up by Medicare, and my hope is that once Medicare covers it, everybody will.

In the meantime, putting out that kind of money for a relatively recent device is scary: it was for me. That is why I wrote this review, to say that I took the step and found it worthwhile. I should clarify that I have no connections to the company, other than as a happy customer.

I first saw the Obi at the 2016 Chicago Abilities Expo. That was also the day I met the late David Hare, who passed away from ALS in 2017. Without use of his arms, David controlled the Obi with his feet. He showed me around the device, and assured me that if I went ahead with the purchase, I would not regret it. I didn’t purchase the Obi until many months later, but you were right, David. Thanks, man.

Obi shows no talent for making wishes or blowing out candles, even if only three. But coincidentally, its choice of birthday cake just so happens to be my favorite, a double-chocolate cake so rich and dense that it threatens to tip over the machine, spoon-first. Happy birthday to me.

Find Obi on Facebook or at meetObi.com

John Beer blogs at WheelieOutThere.blogspot.com and Instagram @wheelieoutthere