Intel is developing a new input method for Dr. Steven Hawking

Although he was diagnosed as having a life expectancy of 3 years with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at the age of 21, it is still a physicist who is active in health nowDr. Stephen Hawking. Intel also gave a new customized PC this year and its installation was done.

Stephen Hawking's New PC

Intel Exploring Ways To Help Stephen Hawking Speak Again | Fox News

Travis Bonifield of Intel delivered a new PC to Dr. Hawking. Bonifield has been in charge of Dr. Hawking 's PC for the last ten years following his predecessor. The person in charge is not full-time, but I usually work as an application engineer.


Dr. Hawking was once using a machine with an AMD CPU, but in 1997 when the financial situation of Intel had deterioratedHonorary Chairman Gordon MooreTold Dr. Hawking directly, "I do not want to use advanced Intel machines? We will gladly make and support machines for you", Dr. Hawking said OK, so Intel I started to use the machine. Since then, we have been offering machines at one pace every two years.


Place a new machine on the wheelchair of Hawking. I am installing Sam Blackburn, a student of Dr. Hawking.

Stephen Hawking's Custom PC Unveiled - YouTube


First remove the old machine ......



Install a new machine.


Start up quickly.


For synthesized speech outputEZ Keys XPusing.



This is how Dr. uses speech synthesis software.

Stephen Hawking Using Voice Synthesizing Software - YouTube


The machine that Intel provided this time is Lenovo'sX220 tabletIt is based on. Core i 7 is installed as a CPU and on the front we have a web camera that Dr. Hawking uses for Skype. Under the wheelchair sitting by Dr. Hawking is a black box containing audio amplifiers, voltage regulators, USB hardware keys, etc. The hardware speech synthesizer is in a separate black box behind the wheelchair.

Dr. Hawking once operated the switch with his thumb to input words and output it as synthesized speech. When I was in good condition I could enter 15 words in 1 minute, but eventually it became one word for 1 minute and finally I got a sensor in the chest muscle because it was difficult to move my thumb. Currently, an infrared sensor is attached to the glasses' vine, and the character is input by sensing movement of the cheek.

However, Dr. sickness is progressing slowly, recently it has become difficult to move cheeks, the input speed also drops to 1 word per minute. For this reason, Dr. Gordon Moore 's honorary president "I've recently entered the words very lately, I got in touch with Intel, is there any help from the Intel?" In response to this, within Intel, we launched several teams to develop something to help Dr. Hawking input. We are advancing research on whether face recognition software can be used as a new input method in the Experience Technology Lab (XTL).