OT: Stephen Hawking film question

[Tim+]

Something that puzzles me about Stephen Hawking's communicator gadget is that he appears to control it with a binary switch, which clearly works but must be as tedious as hell to enter text. Oddly though, he seems to control his electric wheelchair with a two axis joystick.

One would have thought that if he could work a two axis controller for the chair, something a heck of a lot better could have been devised for his communicator.

Of course, it's entirely possible that the film wasn't 100% accurate. ;-)

Tim

[dennis]

maybe the switch makes the joystick control the speech?

[Chris French]

In message , Tim+ writes

AIUI, rather than having to move the cursor around the screen, like using a remote control on a TV screen keyboard His communicator works by scanning a cursor across the screen. He uses the cheek operated switch to select whatever it his he wants to select. The computer using some sort of predictive algorithm to narrow the choices down.

It had an upgrade a year or 2 back so that he can use other facial movements - ege raising an eyebrow for more control options. (it was becoming harder for him to operate as the disease progressed)

[OG]

I've not been able to find out much info on the wheelchair control, but his original speech software dates back to the mid/late 80s and was based on a 'clicker' interface that was already designed for people with limited mobility.

Presumably the software was about as good as possible back in those days, and once SH was familiar with it, he could get up to 15 words per minute with it. By making the letter/word/phrase selection as smart as possible, it was possible to keep the interface as simple as it could be.

Arguably this was the best future proofing, as his disability has progressed, he now is only able to 'click' by twitching a muscle on his cheek that is detected by an IR sensor on his glasses.

[Sam Plusnet]

I wonder if you could make it effective by having several smaller selectable vocabularies. If you want to talk about (say) travelling, there is a modest number of words you are likely to want to use in that context and many thousands which are very unlikely to crop up. A "travel" vocabulary could be compact & thus easier to navigate around.

[Brian Gaff]

Hmm, I seem to remember that over the years the control system was changed to reflect his abilities for moving things, be that his eyes or whatever. A lot of things have been tried, I know. There was a documentary about him which no doubt will now come on TV again, so watch out for that as it went into quite some detail and also talked about him not wanting to lose the primative voice he started with. Brian

[CB]

Having seen the film the other day, my one criticism of it would be the lack of a timeline. We saw the date at the start of the film and the children getting older but that was about it. I suspect that the clicker control was devised long before portable joystick control of computer screens was commonplace or even possible.

[Tim+]

It isn't rocket science! Even a simple joystick using 4 switches could easily have been integrated into a system to control a scanning cursor. I'm sure it was possible, but maybe considered not suitable for his needs given anticipated decline in his condition.

Tim

[Tim+]

I think the "future proofing" is the answer. I suppose at the time he got the system "normal" motor neurone disease sufferers would be expected to decline quickly.

Tim

[Graham.]

I havn't seen the film, but I recall the acronym POSSUM, Patient Operated Selector Mechanism from watching Tomorrows World or similar programs in the 1960s. It was often operated by a suck/blow device.

[R.G. Bargy]

The voice came from the original speech synthesiser gear that he used:

The following site has samples of DECtalk output:

Sounds like Hawking's current voice is actually an improved version of "Paul".

[ARW]

The real question is why did he choose such a shit voice on the communicator. You thought that he would have chosen a voice such as Harrison Fords or at least be able to switch voices for comic effect at parties.

[Tim+]

To start with it was the only one available. I guess once you've adjusted to it, you mentally identify with it. The voice becomes "your voice".

Tim

[Dave Liquorice]

Can't decide if you are being serious or not but at the time that was pretty much all that was available. Remember it has to speak any text not just stock phrases.

I must dig out a ZX81 project that had a dedicated speech phoneme/allophone chip. I think it was this one:

[fred]

Most realistic speech synth I have ever come across came free with a cheapie sound blaster card in the W98 days. For some reason SB abandoned it and anything since has been a poor imitation, they all seem to make use of the truly appalling MS engine.

I haven't sampled any of the big $ ones.