Chuck Jorgensen, Chief Scientist for Neuroengineering, Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA

Chuck Jorgensen is a NASA scientist whose team has begun to computerize human, silent reading using nerve signals in the throat that control speech. In preliminary experiments, they discovered that small, button-sized sensors, stuck under the chin and on either side of the "Adam's apple," could gather nerve signals, and send them to a processor and then to a computer program that translates them into words.

NASA Tech Briefs: What is a subvocal speech system?

Chuck Jorgensen: Subvocal speech is silent, or sub-auditory, speech, such as when a person silently reads or talks to himself. Biological signals arise when reading or speaking to oneself with or without actual Hp or facial movement. A person using the subvocal system thinks of phrases and talks to himself so quietly, it cannot be heard, but the tongue and vocal cords do receive speech signals from the brain.

NTB: How did you study the patterns of the complex nerve signals in the throat that control speech?

Jorgensen: Small electrodes are placed at the location of the tongue and the side of the throat near the larynx, and we differentially capture a signal that is the result of the difference between the two. We can associate the result of the type of signal with a particular action - such as the writing out of a word or the control of a device.

In the demonstration that we prepared, we controlled a small Mars rover. We took the words stop, go, left, and right, and sent them to the rover on a Mars terrain, and could direct the rover to go to different locations without any audible sound.

NTB: How did you "train" the software to recognize speech patterns?

Jorgensen: The network is trained to create a mathematical relationship between the pattern that it sees and the label that we choose for it. When it is trained properly by repeating this process many times, the error of the mapping is reduced to a level where we are then capable of giving it new examples that it hasn't seen before.

NTB: How could NASA utilize this technology?

Jorgensen: There are basically three ways that we view NASA using this technology. The first application can be found where either noisy environments or atmospheric conditions exist. The second application is in the ability of techniques that map directly from the nervous system to a control response to provide engineers with new options for how human beings can communicate with machines.

The third area deals with emergency safety. If there is physical injury - for example if the voicebox or arm is injured - and you don't necessarily have a prosthetic available on Mars, we'd have an emergency method where someone could take the electrodes or even the existing medical monitoring sensors and use their electrical signals to access or control a device.

NTB: Does this system have any commercial applications?

Jorgensen: Quiet cell phones would be one commercial application; possibly communication between divers is another. Anyone who needs to use noisy haz-mat suits or work in high-noise environments could benefit from this technology. The neuro-electronic methods that we are discussing pick up more than just word patterns that you might have subvocally. They can also identify who the speaker is, and track whether the speaker is tired, angry, happy, or sad, so we have a possibility (we have not done this) here of speech enrichment as well as just communication.

A full transcript of this interview appears online at www.techbriefs.com/whoswho. For more information, contact the NASA Ames Commercial Technology Office at 650-604-0625.