New Technology That Can Read Your Mind!
MIT researchers have created a new headset that uses a person’s internal voice to control devices and ask questions without speaking but BY READING YOUR MIND! AlterEgo, as the device is called is able to transcribe words that the wearer verbalizes internally but doesn’t say out loud.
How They Do it
Through the use of diodes attached to the head, A.I. (artificial intelligence), and machine learning the headset can detect and interpret Brain-wave patterns. Software takes readouts from people’s brains and matches them to words or images. Once the mapping is done any future readouts can be read interpreted and used. AlterEgo can be used for real-time Speech-to-text conversations without actually speaking. Researchers use a neural network to match specific neuromuscular signals with specific words. Each person’s physiology is different. The researchers were able to achieve 92% accuracy after 15 minutes of customization and training.
The headset can also provide bone conduction output. What is that you ask? It is used in newer hearing aids that instead of picking up on vibrations through the air and then to the cochlear, a part of the inner ear that helps us hear things, they pick up vibrational energy through skin and bones then to the cochlear. These vibrations and thus audio responses can only be heard by the person that the devices are attached to. This would allow someone to ask questions and receive the answers through the headset without every saying anything and without anyone around you every being alerted. Ok so this doesn’t exactly read your mind per say, it just interrupters impulses that are sent from the brain to your face when you would speak.
Why They do it
So why did these researchers design the AlterEgo? “Our idea was: could we have a computing platform that’s more internal, that melds human and machine in some ways and that feels like an internal extension of our own cognition?” said Arnav Kapur in MIT news.
“We basically can’t live without our cellphones, our digital devices,” says Pattie Maes, a professor of media arts and sciences and Kapur’s thesis advisor. “But at the moment, the use of those devices is very disruptive."
These can open up interesting new control options for all kinds of things. Would there be a way to control drones with your mind instead of your hands, just think up and it takes off? Can we get logistic robots in a warehouse to find shipments by just thinking the part number or order at them and they get the items and then get them ready to ship? Could I write blogs with my mind?! Honestly these are all feasible implementations of this new technology. This could be the start of a new AR revolution in a whole bunch of current and new fields and we can’t wait to see how this can shape things to come.
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