Researchers at The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras have developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to convert brain signals of speech impaired humans into language. A team of researchers lead by Vishal Nandigana, Assistant Professor, Fluid Systems Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Madras, worked behind developing this technology.
Brain signals are typically electrical signals. Electrical signals, brain signal or any signal, in general, are waveforms which are decoded to meaningful information using physical law or mathematical transforms such as Fourier Transform or Laplace transform. These physical laws and mathematical transforms are science-based languages discovered by renowned scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton and Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier.
The wave-like patterns with spikes, humps and crusts which can be converted into simple human language – meaning speech using AI and Deep Learning algorithms. This enabled the researchers to read direct electrical signals of the brain. The researchers tested this concept by getting experimental electrical signals through laboratory experiments to get signals from nanofluidic transport inside nanopores. The nanopores were filled with saline solution and mediated using an electric field.
Explains Nandigana, “The output result is the ionic current, which represents the flow of ions which are charged particles. These electrically driven ionic current signals then studied to be interpreted as human language, meaning speech. This would tell us what the ions are trying to communicate with us.” The researchers are now working on how to decode and interpret these real data signals into a simple human language such as English which can be understood by all human beings.
The other primary application of this field of research potentially is that it can interpret nature’s signals, like the plant photosynthesis process or their response to external forces when their real data signal is collected. “The big breakthrough will be when we would be able to interpret what plants and nature are trying to communicate to us.”
This will help in predicting monsoons, earthquake, floods, Tsunami and other natural disasters using our Artificial intelligence or Deep learning algorithms.