Communications of the ACM
Motorola Patents E-Tattoo That Can Read Your Thoughts By Listening to nvocalized Words in Your Throat
Motorola Mobility has filed a patent application for an electronic smart tattoo that, it says, can intercept subtle voice commands, subvocal commands, and even subconscious thoughts.
Credit: Motorola Mobility
Motorola Mobility has filed a patent application for an electronic smart tattoo that can intercept subtle voice commands, subvocal commands, and subconscious thoughts.
The device would read an auditory signal from the tattoo and convert it into a digital signal. The signals from the brain, conveyed by spikes on the hundreds of laryngeal nerve fibers, are already digital, but they bear no similarity to an auditory signal at this point. After conversion in the many muscles that control the speech organs, there is still no single signal that could be sent to a transducer to generate sound recognizable as speech.
Although it is unclear if the strain gauges could pick up an actual speech signal in the same way that a conventional microphone could, they could at least generate useful information. In addition, built-in electromyography and electrocardiography electrodes could generate electrical records of muscle activity, and perhaps eventually compound nerve potentials.
Although throat microphones have been in use since the 1930s, this patent highlights a great jump forward in technology with a smart tattoo that can wirelessly transmit data.
From Extreme Tech
View Full Article
Abstracts Copyright © 2014 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA
No entries found