Entrepreneur Rick Tett MS’21 holds a notable record at The University of Texas at Dallas. So far, he has sponsored 17 UTDesign® Capstone and EPICS projects through the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. The signature program assigns student teams to corporate mentors as they complete sponsored projects over a period of one to two semesters.

The student teams Tett sponsored have  developed prototypes of his ideas for new products including a novel dual-foot peripheral device that can be used for controlling movement in virtual reality, for PC gaming and for teleoperation of robots. He started his company HoboLoco after receiving the first patent on the controller that takes the steering scheme of a two-wheel hoverboard from the physical world into the
digital world.

“The name HoboLoco — a mashup of hoverboard locomotion — came up while brainstorming with two of my classmates in Entrepreneurship 6370, my first business class at UT Dallas,” Tett said.

Tett dons a pair of distinctive glasses and regularly visits venues like the Capital Factory, a coworking space for entrepreneurs, to pitch his business. He has delivered presentations about the problem of locomotion in virtual reality and telerobotics at events for entrepreneurs including Dallas Startup Week, One Million Cups and several virtual conferences. He participated in the first cohort of the Capital One Accelerator which was conducted in partnership with The DEC Network and UT Dallas. However, his history with Jonsson School leaders began decades ago through tech-networking events in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

“I’ve always had ideas for products but never pursued them,” Tett said. “With HoboLoco, I have jumped on the unique opportunity. I am convinced that this product has the potential to become as useful and ubiquitous as a gamepad. The feet have been underutilized in gaming and computing for far too long.”

 

Tett is a father of three including engineer Emily Levy PhD’21, visual effects artist Stuart Tett and actuary Marshall Tett. Rick Tett is also a grandfather of six. He said he has always enjoyed training the next generation of engineers and inventors. After working for a series of companies, he established himself as an independent contractor in the telecommunications industry where he found a niche working for startups.

To mentor up-and-coming engineers, Tett served on the board at Sci-Tech Discovery Center in Frisco, Texas, where he began searching for new exhibits to add to the center. Pete Poorman a director of corporate relations in the Jonsson School, first informed Tett about the UTDesign EPICS program at UT Dallas, a hands-on, human-centered design program. Tett mentored two student teams working on exhibits.

“I have a passion for raising STEM awareness,” Tett said. “One EPICS project was about the fascinating phenomenon called inattentional blindness. We sometimes are blind to things that are right in front of us because we’re not looking for them.”

Tett continued, “There’s actually a famous example of inattentional blindness called the Invisible Gorilla. The EPICS team developed a game where a participant is driving down the road and there are some things designed to take some mental focus like reading a text or changing a radio station. The idea is to go to the end and see if the people noticed some items in the road. If people ran over the cyclist or baby, you’ve
kind of proven your point.”

Tett himself may have been unaware of the full possibilities of UTDesign but soon after initiating the EPICS projects, he told Poorman about another idea, a foot-operated controller for virtual reality. Poorman thought that would make a great capstone project.

“Rick practically leapt out of his chair,” said Poorman about when he told Rick there were UTDesign capstone project openings. “He was eager to sponsor a capstone team to build a prototype.”