Gadgetory

what if you could type directly from your brain it sounds impossible but it's closer than you may realize and it's just the kind of fluid human-computer interface needed for a are a brain Mouse for a are the woman in this video has ALS she is completely trapped inside her body she cannot move or speak but she is typing with her mind not with eye blanks with her mind an array of electrodes the size of a pea has been implanted where her brain would normally control her birth her motor functions she is typing at eight words per minute directly with her brain now to be clear we are not talking about decoding your random thoughts think of it more like this you take many photos you choose to share some of them similarly you have many thoughts you choose to share some of them as it turns out the vibrotactile sensors embedded in our skin allow us to interpret complex inputs the pressure change in a puff of air the vibration of the vocal cords and on the jaw as language what you'll observe in this video is a man deaf and blind speaking he is using only the sensors of his hand in his skin to hear to process interpret and yes even reproduce the spoken words of his teacher remember he is deaf and blind he is repeating words that he cannot see or hear by feeling them wait just a minute right minute did you forget to shut off the water that they forgot from the 1950s until today what all of these techniques have in common is our brains ability to reconstruct language from components that's Freddy he leads this project and that's Francis she's an electrical engineer she is not deaf and blind but she can hear through her skin she has a system of actuators on her left arm they are tuned to 16 different frequency bands Francis currently has a tactile vocabulary of about nine words she learned them in less than an hour the lights indicate the actuators firing and you'll see that they fire so fast she must learn to actually feel the words