I made this ppt for my friend ! Hope some of you will find it useful!

1. AlterEgo
A Headset that Lets You Silently Converse with Voice-Controlled
Devices
Presentation by Achal Krishna

2. What
is AlterEgo?
• The idea of using one’s voice to tell a computer
what to do is a pretty common one in the sci-fi
genre, but it’s also something we’re actually
seeing now in voice-activated assistants like Siri,
Alexa and Cortana. But the big drawback to these
platforms is that these are not private exchanges;
those who are within earshot can also hear
whatever conversations you’re having with your
devices.
• But that could change with a device being
developed by researchers over at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. Dubbed the
AlterEgo, it’s a stealthy tool that allows users to
interface with computers using commands that
can be verbalized silently, by interpreting
neuromuscular signals in the jaw and face that
occur when one ‘talks’ to oneself

3. AlterEgo can then respond in natural language as well, via bone-conduction headphones
that vibrate into the user’s inner ear, allowing them to hear the answer without drowning
out other auditory information from the user’s environment. In addition, the interface’s
neural network can retrain itself to adapt to the idiosyncrasies of each user’s
neurophysiology.

4. How It Works?
• The wearable system captures peripheral neural signals
when internal speech articulators are volitionally and
neurologically activated, during a user's internal
articulation of words. This enables a user to transmit
and receive streams of information to and from a
computing device or any other person without any
observable action, in discretion, without unplugging
the user from her environment, without invading the
user's privacy.
• To date, the system has been demonstrated and tested
with a small vocabulary of words or short sentences.
Results obtained are presented in two peer-reviewed
publications linked below. The current system is a
research prototype only and will require significantly
more research and development before it could be
deployed in real-life settings.
• Research Topics

5. These electrical impulses from the user’s internal verbalizations are then
processed by a convolutional neural network that has been trained to classify
and translate these signals into words.

6. Bone conduction aural output of the AlterEgo system, making it a closed-loop
input-output platform

7. This smoother workflow with machines
could be brought over not only to
interacting with various applications,
IoT or smart devices — it would also be
useful in workplaces where some
auditory discretion is required when
working with collaborative robots, such
as in the medical field or in military
operations.

8. Conclusion
• “AlterEgo aims to combine humans and computers — such that computing, the internet,
and AI would weave into human personality as a ‘second self’ and augment human
cognition and abilities,” said the research team.
• Others like Elon Musk have proposed similar brain-computer interfaces that would permit
humans to gain access greater computational power and the collective knowledge of
humanity. However, AlterEgo would potentially be a less invasive way to achieve the same
end.

9. Thank You Folks!