Articulate Labs - Turn Everyday Movement Into Physical Therapy

If you have ever rehabbed a knee, you know the cruel irony: the muscle you need most is the one that wastes away fastest. Articulate Labs is going after that problem with a wearable that turns everyday movement into physical therapy, using electrical muscle stimulation timed to how you actually move. Co-founder and CEO Josh Rabinowitz and hardware and firmware lead Herbie (Larry) Kirn join DeAndre and Grant for one of the most technical episodes we've done.
The first half is the why: the science of recovering properly (not just quickly), and the honest, winding story of taking a medical device to market and funding it. The second half is a genuine engineering deep dive, the kind of conversation we rarely get to have on the show.
What we get into:

What Articulate Labs builds: a wearable that turns walking the dog, grocery runs, and getting in and out of the car into strength-training reps, using movement-synchronous electrical muscle stimulation
Why "synchronous" is the whole point: combining stimulation with voluntary movement beats passive stim, and why "if you stay still, it does nothing"
The science of recovering properly: mistiming, the late-firing medial muscle behind a lot of knee pain, and treating the knee as a 3D object rather than a simple hinge (stability over strength)
The go-to-market reality: hospitals, a military demand signal that never quite scaled, a federal moratorium on new DME suppliers, and lessons from remote-PT players like Sword Health and Hinge Health
The honest fundraising conversation: the guilt and shame founders rarely admit to, funding through grants, awards, and accelerators (Techstars, mHub), and reframing a raise as an exchange rather than a handout
A genuine hardware deep dive: two IMUs reading the joint, a clinician-trained trigger, high-frequency stimulation that doesn't rely on motor points, and why only about 3 mA of 100 mA reaches the core of the muscle
Why tissue is so hard to drive electrically (impedance, capacitance, and "big salty creatures"), and why long-distance runners turned out to be nearly impossible to stimulate
Herbie's path from making a manual-transmission car shift itself to writing a real-time, data-flow operating system that hits 50-microsecond latency on the device
EMG vs acoustic (MMG): why muscles are literally "louder" than they are electric, and how sound reveals fatigue and contraction force
The future of med device: diagnose, treat, and monitor in one product, and why "movement as medicine" is still treated as nice-to-have

A few lines that stuck with us:

"We're up front saying this isn't going to do anything for you if you stay still. You need to get up and move."

"You're not taking a handout when you raise capital. They're buying something. It's an exchange."

"100 milliamps at the surface, and what's actually doing the work is the 3 milliamps that makes it to the core of the muscle."

About the guests: Josh Rabinowitz is the co-founder and CEO of Articulate Labs; Herbie (Larry) Kirn leads its hardware and firmware. Articulate Labs builds wearable, movement-synchronous muscle-stimulation devices, starting with quadriceps strength and knee rehabilitation. The team is based at mHub in Chicago.
The Hardtech Podcast is hosted by DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman of Glassboard.