Arnav Kapur received the student Award Lemelson -Mit at $ 15 thousand. for developing a prototype of a headset for silent transmission of commands. He uses the proven idea of laryngophone, but at a new level – the sensors do not read the vibration of the skin or muscles, but the electrical signals that pass through the nerves control. Thus, you can maintain a conversation without making a sound.
In the current form, the Alterago headset looks rude, it is not ready for commercial use, especially since the developer is at a crossroads. Kapur has two priority goals: assistance to disabled people and modernization of voice assistants. In the first case, this will be an attempt to return the speech to those who lost it. In the second – to make virtual assistants deeply personalized, so that their dialogue with the user takes place secret from others.
When a person wants to say something, a characteristic signal is formed in the brain, which is transmitted to the speech apparatus through the nervous system. This provokes changes in the electric field around the nerves, to which the sensor reacts. It is not necessary to open the mouth, exhale air and produce environmental fluctuations, the system intercepts the signal to this, and then interprets into commands. Feedback is even simpler – Alteerego answers the owner through a regular headphone.
Now Arnav Kapur is busy finalizing the system, in particular, the optimization of the speech recognition system. There are a lot of people in the world with a clear mind, but already a decrepit body that is almost not controlled by them. A system that does not have mechanical parts and receives signals directly from the brain, could greatly facilitate their life.
Source — Mit Media Lab