AlterEgo: Friend for the Physically Challenged and Next Generation Digital Assistant

This year, the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Award was won by a student named Arnav Kapoor. The young inventor will spend the $15,000 received by him on creating a silent speech transmission system.

Any word spoken by a human being comes from his brain. Electrical signals travel through the nervous system, and once they have reached the speech organs, they are converted into live speech. The device created by Arnav reads such signals using special sensors allowing an AlterEgo user to converse with a computing device without making any sounds. Feedback is received via special headphones.

At the moment, the device is not yet completed, and its developer is thinking over the nuances of the system. It can find application in medicine helping people who have lost their speaking ability to communicate. The headset can also work in combination with voice assistants.  It enables silent communication with them taking device customization to a new level, and users will be able to give commands to their devices in a concealed manner.