STEPHEN HAWKING’S VOICE SOFTWARE Now AVAILABLE For FREE
يستخدم برنامج مكوّن الرؤية ACAT كاميرا الويب لتتبع وجه المستخدم وكشف إيماءات الوجه.
Designed to help people with disabilities interact with their computer and communicate, the software only works on PC (deal with it Mac people), but is not considered hard to use, and can be adapted to individual needs. A webcam is required since ACAT works from visual clues on a person’s face. Intel says they are developing different types of sensors as other sources of input for the future.
The software can be downloaded here, but please remember, this is an amazing way for people with severe disabilities to find a voice and speak with the outside world, not a toy for you to try and prank your friends with a phone call from the world’s most famous scientist.
Its creators, Intel, hope that it can now be used in research to create interfaces that similar sufferers of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) can use.
Hawking’s system, for example, relies solely on him moving a muscle in his cheek to type and use his computer.
The Vision component of ACAT uses the webcam to track the user's face, detect facial gestures (cheek twitch) and then trigger the UI. If you have any issues or questions about the Vision software, you can contact Lama Nachman (lama.nachman@intel.com)
Note:
- ACAT is available only in English
- ACAT doesn’t include Prof. Stephen Hawking's voice. It supports Microsoft’s Speech API (SAPI) out of the box and uses the default voice on the target machine. (Refer to the Troubleshooting guide on how you can change the default voice). ACAT can be easily extended to support other speech synthesis systems.
- Currently only ACAT is open source. We plan to open source the Vision sensor code as well as all the other sensors, but for now, you can only use the binary release of the Vision code to trigger the system.
- The ACAT Vision software is 64-bit and will not run on 32-bit Windows systems. The ACAT application however is 32-bit and will run on both 32-bit and 64-bit systems.
Documentation
Click here for guides and videos for users and developers to get started on ACAT. The developer's guide has details on ACAT architecture, ACAT plug-ins and extending ACAT functionality.
Troubleshooting Guide
Click here for the ACAT troubleshooting guide. It will be updated as and when problems are found and resolved.
Missing MSVCP110.DLL problem
When you run the application, if you see this message: "The program can't start because MSVCP110.DLL is missing from your computer", click here to download the missing DLL. Click on "Download" on the page and download VSU_4\vcredist_x86.exe.
Running on Windows 10
If the applications don't run on Windows 10, try running them in the compatibility mode. Right click on EXE shortcut on your desktop (say ACAT Vision), select "Properties". Select the "Compatibility" tab. Select the "Run this program in compatibility for" checkbox. From the list, select Windows 7 or Windows 8. Click on OK.
Step-by-step details can be found here
