Pizza At Your Fingertips: Mind-Controlled Pizza Ordering Device Unveiled in Delhi - Watch Video

New Delhi: Delhi-born The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student Arnav Kapur created the "AlterEgo" device, a "mind-reading" headset with AI capabilities. Users can communicate with machines, AI helpers, and other individuals by internally articulating words with the device, whose prototype made its debut in 2018.

When bone conduction is used to transmit and receive streams of information, communication is completely internal and private. In essence, this means that after wearing the gadget, one can order a pizza or a tube ride without having to speak to anyone.

AlterEgo, according to MIT, is a non-invasive, wearable peripheral neural interface that enables people to communicate in natural language with machines, artificial intelligence assistants, services, and other people without using their voice, opening their mouth, or making any other movements that could be seen by others. Instead, they can do this by internally articulating words.

Bone conduction is used to deliver aural feedback to the user, keeping the interface closed-loop and preserving their regular auditory experience. This enables a person to communicate with a computer in a way that they see as wholly internal to themselves, almost like speaking to oneself. 

The major objective of this initiative is to assist persons with speech impairments in communicating, particularly those affected by diseases like multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

On social media, a video of Mr. Kapur using the gadget has gone viral. Mr. Kapur responds to the interviewer's queries in the video almost immediately and without saying a word. "You have the entire internet in your head," the interviewer then says. 

 

 

 

 

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Mr Kapur has a passion for maths, physics, and the arts, according to MIT. When looking for solutions to problems in the world, he thinks that "are all important to consider not as separate disciplines, but as complements." He is presently researching media arts and sciences at the MIT Media Lab as part of his PhD there.