A new mind-reading device means
people can silently type on their computer using nothing but thoughts - and
it's accurate 90 per cent of the time. Instead of communicating with smart
devices by saying 'Ok Google' or 'Hey Siri', the headset silently interprets
what users are thinking. When people think about verbalising something, the
brain sends signals to facial muscles - even if nothing is said aloud. The
device has sensors that pick up seven key areas along the cheek, jaw and chin
that can recognise words and can even talk back once it has processed them. Currently
the 'AlterEgo' device, which was created by researchers from MIT Media Lab, can
recognise digits 0 to 9 and has a vocabulary of around 100 words. The system
consists of a wearable device and an associated computing system which is
directly linked to a program that can query Google. Electrodes in the device
pick up neuromuscular signals in the jaw and face which are triggered when
users say words in their head. The signals are fed to a machine-learning system
that has been trained to correlate particular signals with particular words. The
device also includes a pair of bone-conduction headphones, which transmit
vibrations through the bones of the face to the inner ear.
These headphones do not obstruct
the ear canal so users can still hear information without their conversations
being interrupted. This silent-computing system means users can communicate
with Google without being detected by anyone else. To start with, researchers
found which part of the face was the source of the most reliable neuromuscular
signals. They did this by asking people to subvocalise the same series of words
four times with 16 different electrodes at different facial locations each
time. They found signals from seven particular locations were consistently able
to distinguish subvocalised words. Using this information, MIT researchers
created a prototype that wraps around the back of the neck like a telephone
handset. It touches the face in seven locations either side of the mouth and
along the jaw. They then collected data on a few computational tasks with
limited vocabularies - around 20 words each. One was arithmetic and the other
was used in a chess game. The prototype device could complete these tasks with
90 per cent accuracy. In one experiment researchers used the system to report
the opponents' moves in a chess game. In response the device gave recommended
responses.
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