The Ambient Corporation has developed a technology that allows for voiceless phone calls. The gadget is in the form of a neckband and and translates thought into speech by picking up nerve signals from the vocal cords.

According to the company's co-founder Michael Callahan, a person can be trained to send signals to the vocal cords without speech. These will then be picked up by the neckband and relayed wirelessly to a computer.

The said computer converts the signals into words spoken by a computerized voice. Callahan added that inner thoughts can't be picked by the device so users need not worry. The co-founder further explained:

I can still talk verbally at the same time. We can differentiate between when you want to talk silently, and when you want to talk out loud. That could be useful in certain situations.

As of now, the gadget build demonstrated to the microchip manufacturer Texas Instruments can only recognize about 150 words and phrases. Michael Callahan said that an improved version without vocabulary limit will be released this year.