Project Symbiote: Towards an Internal Personal Assistant

Humans encounter complex calculations daily. However, generally-speaking, humans are poor at complex calculations on their own. It is well-known that the average human is only capable of calculating the answer to simple numerical expressions (SNE's). And, when tasked with more complicated NE's (CNE's), we often struggle. To aid us, we have developed calculating devices, or CD's. Historically, humanity's CD-of-choice has evolved, over time, from the abacus, to the modern-day handheld calculator, where it has stayed, relatively, unchanged. However, we should find it necessary to continuously-improve our CD, to the point where complex calculation is not a hassle for us; It is effective, and also a second-nature to us, a built-in feature of humans. In particular, the handheld calculator's evolution can be taken further, by integrating the calculator into the human brain, itself, providing a significantly, more seamless experience. In this project, I worked towards this with Symbiote: a practical brain-computer interface (BCI) capable of assisting a human with calculating CNE's. By simply thinking, sequentially, about the characters involved in their desired CNE, a human is able to cue Symbiote to decipher each character in the CNE (which, Symbiote is capable of doing with relatively-high accuracy) evaluate the NE, and audibly play the answer to the CNE, via a bone-conduction headset, in their ear. All in all, Symbiote represents the fusion of biological, and synthetic, intelligence to create a new, powerful hybrid entity. As just an elementary proof-of-concept, Symbiote achieves considerable success, paving the way for future, higher-order BCI-based cognitive enhancement in humans.