He also had a webcam that he used with Skype. The Intel team envisaged an upheaval of Hawking's archaic system, which would involve introducing new hardware. Gaze tracking couldn't lock on to Hawking's gaze, because of the drooping of his eyelids. Before the Intel project, Hawking had tested EEG caps that could read his brainwaves and potentially transmit commands to his computer.
Somehow, they couldn't get a strong enough brain signal. They weren't able to get a strong enough signal-to-noise. After returning to Intel Labs and after months of research, Denman prepared a minute video to send to Hawking, delineating which new user-interface prototypes they wanted to implement and soliciting his feedback.
The changes included additions such as a "back button," which Hawking could use not only to delete characters but to navigate a step back in his user interface; a predictive-word algorithm; and next-word navigation, which would let him choose words one after another rather than typing them.
The main change, in Denman's view, was a prototype that tackled the biggest problem that Hawking had with his user interface: missed key-hits. It was unbearably slow and he would get frustrated. He's not somebody who just wants to get the gist of the message across. He's somebody who really wants it to be perfect. To address the missed key-hits, the Intel team added a prototype that would interpret Hawking's intentions, rather than his actual input, using an algorithm similar to that used in word processing and mobile phones.
The problem is that it takes a little time to get used to and you have to release control to let the system do the work. The addition of this feature could increase your speed and let you concentrate on content.
The video concluded: "What's your level of excitement or apprehension? They implemented the new user interface on Hawking's computer. Denman thought they were on the right path. By September, they began to get feedback: Hawking wasn't adapting to the new system. It was too complicated. Prototypes such as the back button, and the one addressing "missed key-hits," proved confusing and had to be scrapped.
We were trying to teach the world's most famous and smartest year-old grandfather to learn this new way of interacting with technology. Denman and the rest of the team realized that they had to start thinking differently about the problem.
We had to point a laser to study one individual. The software developed specially for Hawking also learned to analyze the content of a specific book or lecture he was working on to further simplify the process.
The speech synthesizer gave out the sentence once it is completed. Previous Page Print Page. Next Page. At first, Hawking relied on a hand-held clicker for help choosing his words, which were then synthesized to speech. When he lost the use of his hands, Hawking needed an alternative to a clicker and that's when he switched to the use of a system that detects face movement.
The program run by Intel that allowed Hawking to select characters and words is called ACAT or assistive context-aware toolkit. An infrared switch that was attached to Hawking's glasses would detect movement he made with his cheek that would stop the cursor or mouse from moving on the screen. Fortunately, the progression of the disease slowed a bit, eventually becoming more gradual over the years.
With time, however, he still began losing the use of his voluntary muscles , hands and certain facial expressions. Hawking previously used his finger to control a computer and voice synthesizer. But once he lost use of his hands, he started depending on twitching a cheek muscle to communicate. Most computers designed for him relied on running lists of words. Whenever the cursor reached a word or phrase he wished to use, Hawking twitched his cheek muscle to select it.
Then he'd go on to the next word until he created a sentence. In the s, by selecting words with his finger, he could pick 10 to 15 words per minute. But with the difficulty of twitching a cheek muscle, he could select just about one word per minute [source: Ferguson ]. Because of this, most of Stephen Hawking's speeches and interviews were done in advance to save time. Hawking died at age 76 at his home in Cambridge, leaving behind three children and three grandchildren.
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