Immergo Movement Care

VR telehealth platform enabling physical therapists & movement care providers to author immersive exercise programs with mixed reality for accessible, embodied rehabilitation on Meta Quest.

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Inspiration

Immergo was born from personal experience with the broken rehabilitation system. Our three co-founders each faced their own recovery journeys: Aviv ruptured his elbow in a national judo competition, Michael endured a severe motorcycle accident, and Ash suffered a rock climbing injury. We all struggled with the same barriers: limited access to specialists, difficulty staying engaged with home exercises, and no way to get real-time feedback without a therapist present.

Combined with years of research at UC Santa Cruz and industry experience at Google, Disney, and the NIH, these experiences drove us to build something better.

What It Does

Immergo is an AI-powered XR telehealth platform that transforms consumer Meta Quest devices into clinical tools for physical rehabilitation:

  • Full-body avatar interactions for immersive 3D therapy sessions
  • Mixed reality mode blending physical and virtual spaces for contextual exercise guidance
  • Provider authoring tools for therapists to create custom exercise programs
  • AI-driven biomechanics analysis for objective movement assessment
  • Asynchronous exercise programs with guided avatar instruction

How We Built It

Built with Unity 6 using OpenXR and Meta's XR SDK. Key components include full-body tracking with custom inverse kinematics, mixed reality passthrough integration, real-time pose estimation, cloud-based session recording, and a therapist dashboard for program authoring.

For this competition, we enhanced our mixed reality capabilities and full-body tracking systems, enabling clients to exercise in their own physical space while receiving avatar-guided feedback.

Challenges

Building clinical-grade tools on consumer hardware required balancing accuracy with accessibility. We developed adaptive feedback systems that provide meaningful guidance while accounting for tracking limitations, working closely with physical therapists through our VA partnerships to match real clinical workflows.

Accomplishments

  • $1M+ in NSF SBIR funding
  • Partnerships with Houston VA and University of Montana
  • Forbes 30 Under 30 Healthcare recognition
  • NVIDIA Inception membership and Fortune 50 collaborations

The Team

Founded by three collaborators working together since 2015 at UC Santa Cruz:

Aviv Elor, PhD (President & Chief Research Officer): Leads product strategy and R&D. PhD in Computational Media with 26+ publications, experience at Meta Reality Labs, Google, Disney Imagineering, and NIH.

Michael Powell (CEO): Drives business development, fundraising, and strategic partnerships with healthcare systems.

Ash Robbins (CTO): Architects technical infrastructure across Unity, cloud services, and AI/ML systems.

What's Next

We're conducting an 80-subject Houston Veterans Affairs usability study and expanding provider authoring tools to make our async movement care home exercise and assessment programs avaliable to everyone. Our goal: make advanced physical rehabilitation accessible to everyone, regardless of geography.

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