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Jordan McRae's mobiWAN technology uses bone conduction to allow users to both transmit and receive audio

Twenty metres below the surface, Jordan is battling to breathe. He pulls hard, but the oxygen wont fill his lungs. Theres a powerful current in the ocean and poor visibility. Nothing but blue fuzz in every direction.

Jordan tries the secondary regulator on his scuba suit. Its broken too, injecting a fine mist of salt water into his lungs. Its time to escape. Jordan isnt panicking yet. Hes trained and knows how to surface, following the smallest air bubble up. He signals to the only other diver he can see. Im going up, he says with his thumb.

But the diver misunderstands and pulls Jordan down by the legs. Jordan grabs the mans secondary regulator to get the air he needs. Hes got time now. He wishes there was a way for the two of them to speak. For the man to say: Calm down, everythings OK, were going up to a safety spot, then were out of this situation.

Recovering on a beach in Mozambique, Jordan McRae thinks a lot about what happened. An engineer, he knows the problem he experienced can be solved with technology. He thinks about the fundamental power of a voice. And how people should be able to communicate anywhere, with anyone. Like that air bubble, an idea begins to rise in his mind. An idea that leads Jordan to mobiWAN, an innovative bone-conducting technology that bypasses the ears and puts a voice directly inside a listeners head.

Those who use mobiWAN say it feels like magic. But Jordan (38) is no magician. Hes a modern-day inventor who trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His journey includes everything from working on top-secret robotic planetary defence projects with Lockheed Martin and NASA to collaborating on digital art projects in Paris. Hes done the Steve Jobs thing, working out of a garage in San Francisco, prototyping a bunch of cool stuff. Hes dabbled in renewable wind energy and modular electronic components (landing him on Kickstarters hall of fame).

Ive always believed you have to do what you love and do what interests you, says Jordan. You have to create the freedom you need to be an inventor.

At school, Jordan wanted to be a marine engineer. He was drawn to the ocean. He wanted to find ways for more people to explore and protect it.

Jordan McRae

To study at MIT and then at Stanford University in California, Jordan mixed scholarships, part-time work and military service. Those were tough years, but they gave him freedom later on.

In 2017, Jordan returned to London and founded Mobilus Labs. The young tech start-up secured funding and recruited a team of engineers and designers to build the mobiWAN headset. Initially, the focus was on turning sound into vibrations and sending that in one direction to a listeners inner ear. The beauty of the design is that users can communicate clearly at a construction site, an oil rig, or in any noisy location. They can wear ear plugs and still hear each other over the machinery or powerful winds. Most importantly, they can stay safe by being able to communicate.

Jordans company built the prototypes, tested the concept and soon became the exclusive audio partner to Trimbles XR10 HoloLensmixed-reality headsets. Thousands of the first-generation mobiWAN headsets have been sold in more than 20 countries.

Last October, Mobilus Labs launched the next-generation headset, which allows for two-way bone-conducting traffic. The new bit is the microphone, which turns vibrations into voice, before sending it to the listener where the reverse process plays out. This solves the ancient audio problem of isolating a single voice in a loud and chaotic environment, sending a clean digital signal to the receiver.

The upgraded mobiWAN headsets are being tested in all kinds of environments.

In future, I want all machines to speak the language I speak, in the most natural way, to make it as easy as possible for me to use them as a tool, Jordan explains. And voice is one of the most intuitive ways to transfer data.

His focus remains on how technology can become a better part of the human experience.

Jordans book of ideas grows, page by page. And he still loves the ocean. Not long ago, he and his fiance used a prototype bone-conducting device while diving in the Caribbean.

I pointed out a barracuda and, when she saw it, she was so excited, Jordan recalls.

I got to hear what she was thinking. I got to share that moment.

There were no underwater misunderstandings that day.

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