Sure, reading lips is a useful trick, but not as cool as what Chuck Jorgensen is up to. The other day I promised to follow up on a 2.5 year-old NASA technology that picks up nerve signals sent from the brain to speech organs, and translates them into electronic communication.

Jorgensen is a scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center. His lab works on extending human senses through electronic devices. The "subvocal" speech research, which now has follow-ons in Academia and the private sector, picks up signals running down neuromuscular channels and sends them to devices wirelessly. NASA could use the technology to help astronauts communicate inside their space suits without a noisy breathing apparatus obscuring the voice. First-responders in haz-mat suits can send messages to superiors' cell phones. It's technology Darth Vader could use. The lab has a scale-down site with a video of the subvocal-speech technology in action here.

So far the technology can only pick up 10-25 words. The lab is working to break words into component phonemes, so that the electrodes can pick up and translate continuous speech. Other languages, such as Japanese or Russian, which could be more conducive than English.

Jorgensen and his colleagues are also developing bio-electronic interfaces that use muscle signals to customize physical-electronic interfaces across a wide variety of situations, from helping the disabled regain mobility to moving robots with one's eyebrows.

NASA is a civilian agency, but certainly soldiers would appreciate a robot they can control quietly and without joysticks--and without putting their guns down.

The private sector is throwing resources at these ideas that NASA's team does not have. Still, Jorgensen hopes the Ames research will lead to commercially available products before potential competitors. "We started a lot of this stuff and we'd like to be the first out of the gate," he says.

Forbes.com profiled Jorgensen earlier this year.