New Stephen Hawking speech synthesizer based on SwiftKey

Professor Hawking and his team of technicians



Stephen Hawking has been struggling with a degenerative motor neurone disease for over 50 years. Unfortunately, the professor's speech speed decreases over the years, so in 2011 he turned to Intel co-founder Gordon Moore asking whether Intel could help him upgrade and install a more efficient system.



Intel has completed the order, and in January 2015 promises to put the ACAT program (Assistive Context Aware Toolkit) in free access. More than 3 million people around the world suffer from degenerative motor neuron disease. Soon they will be able to take advantage of open-source development from Intel. In addition, researchers can modify the program under the control of touch, blink, eyebrow movement and other ways.

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The software is made on the basis of SwiftKey technology and with the help of specialists of this company.



The development of ACAT lasted three years, and SwiftKey joined the work two years ago. The new Hawking synthesizer predicts input words, as does SwiftKey on mobile devices. As a result, the professor for typing need to enter only 20% of the characters.



Hawking's synthesizer was originally made in the form of a lever on the chair with which he chose the letters on the computer screen. He used the system almost unchanged for several decades, only a few years ago, an infrared sensor was placed on Hawking glasses to indicate the letters to the direction of gaze.



With ACAT, the professor chooses whole words instead of letters. As a result, the text input speed doubled, and the execution time of the most typical tasks increased tenfold (surfing the Internet, etc.).



The ACAT program was developed taking into account the vocabulary, which the professor put at the disposal of the developers. If the program code is open, then the vocabulary can probably be customized individually for each user.







Intel has been helping Stephen Hawking with a selection of computer hardware since 1997, when Gordon Moore noticed that Stephen was using a computer on an AMD processor . Since then, Intel has been doing a free upgrade of Hawking computers every two years.



Professor Hawking commented on the installation of a new speech synthesizer: “Medicine could not cure me, so I rely on technology to communicate and live. Intel has been supporting me for almost 20 years, allowing me to do what I love every day. Developing this system has the potential to improve the lives of people around the world and is an advanced system for ensuring human communication and overcoming barriers to communication that previously stood in the way. ”







Doctors diagnosed motor neuron degenerative disease in Stephen Hawking when he was 21 years old. Experts believe that he will live a maximum of 25 years. Now the professor is 72 years old.