Kalogon vows to change the way we sit

MELBOURNE, Fla. – Kalogon founder Tim Balz is hell-bent on disrupting the wheelchair industry and that’s not just a threat—it’s a promise.  

Using a combination of machine learning and patent-pending air cell technology, the company’s Orbiter Smart Cushion analyzes pressure points in real-time, intelligently redistributing weight, increasing comfort and maintaining blood flow in wheelchair users. 

“There’s a lot coming,” said Balz, a former SpaceX engineer. “2023 is going to be a crazy year for seating. It is going to be the year where everything changes, whether the industry likes it or not, because of what we have coming out.” 

Kalogon also offers a connected app that enables wheelchair users, caregivers and clinicians to personalize their experience to support healing and pain relief. 

While Balz concedes that the Orbiter is on the expensive side, the company is launching multiple new products this year that will allow it to reach everyone at all price points in the market. 

“Then we’re starting to take that into other markets,” said Balz. “That way, what we can do is keep innovating in the consumer market—think aircraft seating—and then we can roll those improvements continuously back into the wheelchair market.” 

Balz, who fell in love with “tinkering” when he joined his high school robotics team, didn’t waste a second building his resume. At 15, he founded Freedom Chairs, a wheelchair refurbishment nonprofit, donating more than 175 wheelchairs—mostly complex rehab—to those in need. In 2014, he won Intel's Internet Of Things Device of the Year Award with the Intel Connected Wheelchair. Then in 2017, he won over a SpaceX recruiter with a single rider electric vehicle he built. 

“I drove it up and said, ‘Take a ride on this,’” said Balz. “And while he was riding it, I was talking to him about my background and asked, ‘So you guys looking to hire?’” 

At SpaceX, Balz says he learned how to “disrupt an industry that was behind by decades.” His time there also allowed him to recruit “quite a few really, really good engineers” to work for Kalogon.