smartARM’s story begins at Ontario Tech University

smartARM Founder, Hamayal Choudhry, holding a prototype of a robotic arm.

Hamayal Choudhry’s fascination with robotics and automated systems began as a mechatronics engineering student at Ontario Tech University. While exploring how they are beginning to make life easier and through a conversation with his friend Sekai Muscutt—who lives with a congenital limb difference—he realized there was a gap in the prosthetics market. On one side of the market were cosmetic solutions—in which many did not offer any significant function—and on the other side, were robotic solutions that offered little enhanced mobility for the users. In fact, these more advanced solutions were so expensive, they were not accessible to 95 per cent of the global prosthetics-wearing population.

This insight led to an incredible entrepreneurship journey and the company known today as smartARM.

Invest Durham recently spoke to Choudhry to learn more about his entrepreneurship journey over the past five years. During our conversation, Choudhry pinpointed this as the moment where everything began: It set Choudhry off on an entrepreneurial journey, “…To build a low cost, 3D printed bionic arm, powered by vision. To make something accessible but powerful as well.”

The resulting product, smartARM, was the first of its kind—a bionic arm that can “think and see” for itself using a built-in camera and machine learning algorithms. Choudhry eventually entered Microsoft’s 2018 Imagine Cup, and to his surprise, went on to beat thousands of teams,= and win. He was just 20 years old.

Winning the Imagine Cup was an important inflection point for the company. Evan Neff, now Head of Product, joined the company in December 2020. The project continued to rapidly progress; with the Imagine Cup prize came connections, resources, speaking opportunities, and access to talented mentors at Microsoft. This became even more important as the company grew and sought investment during a pandemic when face-to-face meetings were impractical. The initial relationships were invaluable to support the company through those years. In addition, the relationship with Sekai Muscutt—another Ontario-based entrepreneur--quickly became deeper than a potential customer inquiry; Muscutt went on to be a tester, and the first recipient of a product.

We asked Choudhry about the impact of the Imagine Cup and he was quick to point out this was just one factor among many that were essential along the way.

“At Ontario Tech, the Jeffrey S. Boyce Engineering Innovation Design Studio provided access to equipment we would never have had otherwise—3D printers and other equipment to design projects and explore ideas. Having spaces like that are so critical to fostering innovation. And, the Brilliant Catalyst (a tech incubator at Ontario Tech) was able to give us legal advice early on.”

Choudhry also points to his time working in the lab of Dr. Haoxiang Lang, a professor at Ontario Tech in the Department of Automotive and Mechatronics Engineering. “Dr. Lang took me on and I spent the summer working—helping out in his lab on projects. It was one of the first times I had worked with the computer vision side of Artificial Intelligence. He had a lot of expensive equipment, the kind you’d only find in a university setting. That access and exposure—that privilege—was a huge part of what sparked the flame of smartARM being vision powered.”

Launching the smartARM

The company unveiled their first production product in 2023 to considerable excitement. “Interest in our product is significant. The nature of what we’re building is so physical and so emotional,” notes Choudhry.

As the business grows, keeping the passion flame alight means working with investor pitches, hiring talent, media relations, and more. These aspects of entrepreneurship are similar to engineering problems, explains Choudhry, “entrepreneurship in general is similar to engineering in that it is problem solving. At the end of the day, going through an engineering program and being taught to solve problems has prepared me to take what is in front of me, and boil it down to first principles and solve it that way. The same way as I would a technical problem.”

When asked what advice he’d give to students considering entrepreneurship as their path, Choudhry chuckled and quipped, “I’d advise them not to aspire to be entrepreneurs. I’d recommend them to want to solve problems.” In a more serious tone he notes, “If you’re working on something you’re not super passionate about, it’s going to be harder to push through when things get super hard—and they will.”

As interest in the smartARM drives growth in the company, Choudhry and Neff are looking to the future. The nature of their product is such that they are collecting user data unlike any other business in the world. It doesn’t take long in speaking to Choudhry to see how their company will be able to leverage their data and learnings—not just in their future products, but the future economy.

“How can we continuously innovate in this industry? With the democratization of technology, especially with AI, our goal is to empower human autonomy and empower people to live independent and robust, amplified versions of themselves.”

Learn more about smartARM:

Learn more about Engineering programs at Ontario Tech University:

Department of Automotive and Mechatronics Engineering
Department of Electrical, Computer, and Software Engineering
Department of Energy and Nuclear Engineering
Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
Engineering Research Labs
Engineering Outreach for Youth and Teachers
Women in Engineering Program

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