Facebook unveils research arm studying thought, touch-based communication

Facebook unveils research arm studying thought, touch-based communication tech

Facebook in its 10th edition of the F8 conference unveiled a new research arm that is studying brain to text technology. Regina Dugan, ex-Googler and DARPA employee, heads the research arm.

Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the ninth edition of Facebook F8 conference last year.

• Facebook Inc on Wednesday pulled aside the curtain on a secretive unit headed by a former chief of the Pentagon’s research arm, disclosing that the social media company is studying ways for people to communicate by thought and touch.
• Facebook launched the research shop, called Building 8, last year to conduct long-term work that might lead to hardware products. In charge of the unit is Regina Dugan, who led a similar group at Alphabet Inc’s Google and was previously director of the US Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA
• Dugan told software developers at Facebook’s annual F8 conference that the company was modelling Building 8 after DARPA, a government office founded in the 1950s that gave the world the internet and the miniaturised GPS receivers used in consumer devices.
• Any hardware rollouts are years away, Dugan said in a speech. Potential products could, if successful, be a way for Facebook to diversify beyond its heavy reliance on advertising revenue.
• One example of Building 8’s work so far, Dugan said, was an attempt to improve technology that allows people to type words using their minds.

• “It sounds impossible, but it’s closer than you may realise,” Dugan said.
• Using brain implants, people can already type eight words a minute, she said. Facebook’s goal, working with researchers at several US universities, is to make the system non-invasive, as well as fast enough so that people can type 100 words a minute just by thinking.
• Possible uses include helping disabled people and “the ability to text your friend without taking out your phone,” she said. 
• Another Building 8 project, she said, was trying to advance the ability to communicate through touch only, an idea with roots in Braille, a writing system for the blind and visually impaired.
• A video played at the conference showed two Facebook employees talking to each other through touch. As one employee, Frances, wore an electronic device on her arm, the other, Freddy, used a computer programme to send pressure changes to her arm.
• “If you ask Frances what she feels,” Dugan said, “she’ll tell you that she has learned to feel the acoustic shape of a word on her arm.”
• In December, Facebook signed a deal with 17 universities including Harvard and Princeton to allow swifter collaboration on projects with Dugan’s team.