Don't talk about Hawking today, talk about the black technology behind his wheelchair

(Original title: Don't talk about Hawking today, talk about the black technology behind his wheelchair)

There are too many unsolved mysteries in the world. Many of them are hidden deep in our minds and we do not even realize it at all. Many people may not have much thought about Hawking, but if you think about it, you will find that you have never heard of his true voice, nor have you ever seen him writing, but you have never questioned his existence.

The wheelchair under him is outputting voice dryly. Is Hawking speaking or talking in a wheelchair? How does Hawking completely control the wheelchair? What are the unknown technologies behind this?

Stephen Hawking

As we all know, Stephen King is not a living legend. When he became famous, he was almost paralyzed. He was sitting in a wheelchair all day long. Even simple conversations with people seemed difficult.

It is hard to imagine that a person with a disability who couldn’t afford a pen and couldn’t speak, and who couldn’t even take care of themselves, wrote more than a dozen best-selling books, published many influential dissertations, and participated in a number of film and television drama works. Behind the success is not a great woman, of course, is his wheelchair (he can sit up without a wheelchair).

Hawking was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis as early as the age of 21 (a type of motor neuron damage disease that is still unknown, also known as "degenerative disease"), and his muscles gradually lose strength. Atrophy, which eventually spreads to the relevant muscles for breathing and swallowing, is most likely to die from respiratory failure.

Before the illness, Hawking was also a handsome guy.

As the condition continued to deteriorate, Hawking began to rely on walking sticks to travel. A few years later, Hawking would have been unable to stand. Although he had been very reluctant to use a wheelchair, he faced reality only. Hawking and the wheelchair have been officially started for nearly 50 years.

At first, the wheelchair was only a means of transportation for Hawking. Apart from the inconvenience of his actions, he was not different from ordinary people. He was still able to talk with others, and slowly wrote down some formulas.

After the illness became thin, Hawking

After immigrating to the United States, Hawking got on an electric wheelchair and seemed to have recovered his lost youth. He remembered the adventurous efforts of the team of the Cambridge team. He developed a special hobby of “a wheelchair” and often adjusted the wheelchair to the highest speed. Sidewalk rampage.

But Hawking wouldn’t feel like he would continue to “kick a wheelchair,” and his condition deteriorated again. He could no longer write, and his speech began to become vague. At the beginning, everyone could still barely understand. Then only his family and The closest friends can accurately understand and guess what he says. At that time, Hawking went out to accompany the wheelchair and had to bring a "Chairman."

Still humble talking Hawking

In fact, at this time Hawking is still happy, at least he can also express a sentence, and soon he will completely bid farewell to such a happy time. In 1985, Hawking suffered severe pneumonia when he was visiting Europe. The doctor performed a tracheotomy operation. Although he saved his life, he never lost his ability to speak.

There will be a blessing after the so-called death, but this statement does not seem to be fulfilled in Hawking. For Hawking, communication after a loss may be more important than life and death. He also tried many ways, but there wasn't one that was satisfying, such as the original spelling version.

Hawking needs to select the area with his eyes, determine the color, and finally pick the eyebrows to confirm that one letter and one letter are spelled into words. This set of “memorial expressions” requires two people to practice, and it takes a few minutes to spell one word, which is extremely troublesome.

The spelling board demonstrated in Hawking's biographical film The Theory of Everything

It is not only his own desire but also the urgent needs of the academic community to reinstate Hawking. The physicist Martin King first thought of using an auxiliary software to communicate with Hawking. He found the CEO of Words+, California, and asked him to help Professor Hawking. The CEO had developed a set of software called Equalizer to help the mother-in-law, who also suffers from "freeze-thawing." He learned that Professor Hawking was helping and immediately said he would go all out.

To facilitate the operation of this software, they installed Apple II computers and a monitor in Hawking's wheelchair. The principle of this system is actually very simple. The cursor sweeps the alphabet displayed on the screen line by line. Hawking only needs to give the computer a confirmation command when the cursor passes over the desired letter.

At that time, Hawking’s hands still had a certain amount of athletic ability. Not only was he able to maneuver his own wheelchair, but the use of assistive software was not a problem at all. After all, the entire software required only one or two buttons to operate.

It is said that Hawking is still one of the three fastest people using the scanning input method and can spell 15-20 words per minute. The other two are software developers and his good friends.

Hawker's Equalizer software

This set of software solves Hawking's input problem. He can already write conveniently, but in the life only the text is not enough. Hawking’s family and friends have also found a company that develops speech synthesizers, hoping to seek help.

The equipment produced by this company is mainly used for automatic telephone answering systems, and it is an honor to receive help from Hawking. They adapted a CallText 5010 device to use the best word conversion speech processor at the time and gave it to Hawking in 1988. In this way, Hawking can “speak” out loud after entering the text, as if to regain new life.

This iron box is Hawking's "throat" over the years.

However, this wheelchair-mounted hardware is not perfect, and the sound it makes is not what we now know as Hawking's voice. Hawking himself is also very dissatisfied with this, he asked to replace his voice.

So, the engineers of MIT helped Hawking realize his wish. He made three kinds of voices for Hawking: the voice of his wife, his daughter and himself. Probably because these jobs were done by Americans, Hawking's voice still has a clear American accent.

With a variety of black technology wheelchairs, Hawking can continue to write books. He rearranged his previous manuscripts and published a "Short History of Time" that shocked the world. Today "A Brief History of Time" has been translated into more than 40 languages. More than 10 million copies were sold, and it is known as the best-selling bestseller. Hawking said happily, "I can convey information more happily than before I lost my speaking ability."

In 1997, Intel's situation in the field of processors was excellent. Its founder, Gordon Moore, and Hawking had a face-to-face exchange. He found that the entire system of the computer used by Hawking wheelchairs with old rivals AMD processors had many shortcomings. Said to be contracting Hawking's hardware equipment, Hawking readily accepted.

Intel redesigned Hawking’s wheelchair, integrated the computer into a wheelchair, powered the wheelchair’s battery, and promised to upgrade the hardware every two years.

The years are like a knife, not only taking away Hawking's athletic ability, ability to make a sound, and even the three fingers that can finally move can not let go. From 2005, Hawking can only use one finger to operate the entire wheelchair. After just three years, he has no control over his fingers. Only part of his muscles in the face can move, and his equipment is facing another big one. Transformation.

Hawking's graduate assistant took the initiative and designed a "cheek switch" device for him. The device can be mounted on a spectacle frame and use IR to detect a muscle activity on the right cheek of Hawking.

The device hung on the right side of Hawking’s glasses is an infrared sensor.

This control method is similar to the distance sensing sensor on a smartphone. The sensor emits an infrared beam that is invisible to the naked eye and detects the distance based on the intensity of the object's reflection. Hawking contracts the facial muscles. When the sensor receives a change signal, it sends a confirmation to the computer. This method can completely replace the previously used manual click operation, and does not change the original operating logic.

Hawking only twitches facial muscles slightly when typing

With the upgrade of Hawking's wheelchair, he also evolved from "a finger to the world" to "a muscle performing art," but Hawking's "talking" speed is reduced to 5-6 words per minute.

After a long period of time, Hawking’s input efficiency dropped by one word per minute, his facial muscles began to degenerate, they could not be controlled precisely, and they often fell into the wrong choice of letters. They had to resort to the Intel team again.

In Intel's lab, Hawking spent a full 20 minutes to “say” a greeting of about 30 words. When Hawking’s pain and helplessness engineers looked at it, they all hoped to help Hawking. professor.

They have considered using the latest technology to salvage this outdated system, such as eye tracking technology. Although the eye tracking technology sounds great, the principle is actually not complicated. Simply speaking, it is through the detection of subtle movements of the eye to achieve the control of the device.

The state-of-the-art solution uses an infrared projection method that can be precisely controlled to within 1 cm on a 30-inch screen, which can be used as a substitute for mouse operation. However, Hawking's condition has caused severe drooping eyelids, eye tracking technology can not accurately lock Hawking's eyes, this program was abandoned.

In addition to eye tracking technology, engineers also asked Hawking to try sci-fi brainwave recognition technology. Many people's understanding of brainwave technology is the so-called "idea", the controlled device can accurately understand the user's ideas, in fact, the current technology is far from reaching.

Brainwave signals that can be clearly identified are often body motion control signals, such as fists, facial expressions, raising hands, etc. These signals are equivalent to one by one button, and each signal can be set to function and work. As for the thinking in the depths of the mind, there is currently no way to interpret it, so at the moment there is no need to worry about being robbed of thoughts.

Perhaps because Hawking's control of the body has deteriorated over the years, even a professional brainwave cap cannot detect a signal with sufficient intensity. In addition, brainwave recognition technology requires a lot of training to be able to have a higher recognition rate. This is difficult for Grandfather Hawking who is over seventy years old. He himself is also not willing to change it. The logic of the operation for a decade is after all an old man.

No way, the team of engineers had to find new ways to focus on improving the direction of software input. They carefully observed every detail of Hawking's input and found many problems. To their astonishment, it is already the 21st century. Hawking still spells the words one letter at a time. In addition to his rigorous personality, the rest of them may have to be attributed to this ancient software.

Although the software developed by Words+ has been updated, the Lenovo function is still very weak.

The team came up with the award-winning SwiftKey company in the smartphone input method field. They collected a large number of Hawking's documents, analyzed word frequency and contextual relevance, and gave the most suitable prediction word when Hawking entered. For example, if you type "Stephen", the software will think of "Hawking" and you don't need to input letters one by one. I believe most smartphone users are familiar with this logic.

SwiftKey's powerful word association function

At the same time the new software also adds a lot of convenient operations, including a key mute, full-screen mouse click anywhere, fast search and e-mail. With the new software, Hawking's input is 10 times more efficient, and it's easy to use the Firefox browser to access the Internet. Last year, Hawking also opened Weibo and personally sent Bowen to communicate with Chinese netizens, scaring netizens saying that they were "dreaming."

I dreamed of Hawking opened Weibo

Hawking also made no secret of his love for new software and praised this revolutionary upgrade. He said "I hope it will continue to serve me for the next 20 years."

The Intel team saw the success of the new software and also intended to help more disabled people. They opened the source code for the ACAT (Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit) software and hosted it on the well-known open source community GitHub. When people with disabilities use the same software as Hawking, they also hope that everyone can pick up firewood, and they can continue to improve the software under the maintenance of more developers.

Hawking's ACAT Support Software

In addition to providing computer technology support to Hawking’s wheelchairs, the Intel team has also improved many designs for wheelchairs, including improved ergonomics, higher performance control systems, and integrated health monitoring and life support devices. At the same time, they also launched the Galileo and Edison Development Toolkit to promote the development of smart IoT wheelchairs and to make it easier for people with disabilities to enjoy a more convenient life.

There is such an old saying that “there is a time to build a hero”. Looking at today, this sentence may not be accurate any more. The legend of Hawking may be described more accurately with the “time saving genius”. Hawking caught up with the good times and chose the right path to life. He once said in his video clip: "Medicine does not cure my illness, so I rely more on technology."

Some people say that technology violates the law of survival of the fittest. It saves too many people who should have been “eliminated”; but if there is no technology, all humans may be the weak ones that should be “eliminated”. The story of Hawking is actually a human story.

After all, as Hawking said: "Where there's life, there's hope."

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