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Talk ... Without Speaking
mjm7 writes "Finally, we might be able to get rid of all those annoying people yelling over the static on their cell phones! CNN has an article about a new technology that senses muscle movements in your face and then translates them into sound. This way all you have to do is mouth words into the phone...not actually speak!" Somehow I suspect that we'd lose a lot of the
subtleties of communication, but it sure would be nice every time hemos calls me from the discotheque.
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The Anderson partner called his secretary on his cell phone and said:
Ship the Enron documents to the Feds
But she heard:
Rip the Enron documents to shreds
It turns out that this was all just a case of bad cellular...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
We'll finally be able to understand what the hell mimes are doing! Rejoice!
"I only speak the truth"
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Imagine what a world of difference this would make to the mute or to people who had lost the use of their voice due to throat cancer. It seems weird they didn't mention the applications this would have for people who have lost or have never had the use of their voice.
yes i run a goth/punk/emo porn site.
Words like this may cause some minor misunderstandings.
Lord, bless my users that they may stop being such fucking idiots!!
I'd also have to say this should be made mandatory for all people that would otherwise force me to listen to their loud cell phone conversations.
Yeah, this sounds like just the thing for people who want voice dictation, but work in a "noisy" environment. :-)
Alternatively, you could even have a microphone attached so that when you actually did speak, it would automatically disable the recognition - no more accidentally transcribing your half of a phone conversation for example. Wait a minute, I have to patent that idea!
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
Think about it, don't most people move the muscles in their mouths slightly different when they are mouthing words, as opposed to actually speaking them? I would venture that the technology wouldn't be able to discern the subleties in the way we speak.
Other than that, it sounds like an interesting technology.
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
Talking on my phone
I twitch, about to sneeze hard.
Phone thinks I said "F*CK."
does anyone remember the "my teacher is an alien!! series? plot synopsis: 4th grader finds out teacher is an alien (suprise, suprise), teacher/alien sees him seeing him, and keeping glactic security safe, takes him up into the New Jersey (mega-big spaceship), and they cruise about, saving the universe.
anywho, i read (and probably own) the whole series in probably 4th grade, i'm 18 1/2 now. on one of their missions, they had special devices like this; except it attached to your throat muscles, which is probably a whole lot easier and less conspicious. the funny part was that they had to whisper, otherwise they'd "yell" right into the other people's earsets. good to know this stuff is comming to fruit
my teacher is an alien on amazon.com
the interesting thing about the series, is that it explains in amazingly simple terminology, using a large noodle, how hyperspace works. i'd explain more, but i don't want to get modded offtopic TOO much. and i have to go to work.
moox. for a new generation.
"Rotate the pod please, Hal..."
... I could see your lips moving ...
Dave
-Ev
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Was that in "The Diamond Age"? I can't remember.
This was in the Ender's Game series. This is how Ender communicated with Jane.
-prator
Is that this would be great for people who for one reason or another no longer have voiceboxes.
I had a great-aunt who lost a decent portion of her lungs to cancer and cigarettes, and up until her death a few years ago she had to use one of those darth-vader vibration-amplifier things like the "Ned" character does on south park. I was terrified of her when i was six.. (Give me a break, i was six years old and stupid.)
Anyway, i can imagine that technology like this would be just about perfect for people disabled in a similar manner through tobacco, cigarettes or who knows what. No? At least it would keep such people from having to deal with their idiot six-year-old-nephews reactions to the harsh sounds of the vibration amplifier box..
and really, even beyond that, tech like this would be just about the only option for people who are going through whatever that intensive vocal-node-therapy thing is where you're banned from speaking for six months. and i know a number of theatrical singers who would be intensely happy to have one of these so that they could rest their voices between performances without cutting themselves off from the world...
I hope that once this complete, they'll sell a unit where the voice-synth thing outputs into speakers rather than a phone.. I'm sure they would have looked into this possibility by now, right?
(P.S.: While we're on the subject, sort of.. just in case anyone reading knows: This came up as an argument the other night when we were watching the Oscars and examining how much pain Enye appeared to be in from having to exert her voice. What's the difference between a vocal node and a vocal nodule?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
to those with Tourette Syndrome.
Was anybody else immediately reminded of the old Simon and Garfunkel tune, sounds of silence in particular the line about "people talking without speaking" (the link is a poor transcription).
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
(It's just a JOKE! I know I'm not the first to think of it.)
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Usually when I mouth a word into my phone it usually means I DON'T want the other person to hear it. I'm not sure what the learning curve would be on a device like this but chances are that until person hits it they are going to have a lot of explaining to do!!
I stole this Sig
Couldn't someone use the movements in addition to the sound to filter out the actual speaker's voice from the background noise? This seems almost like a nonlinear Kalman filter application (though I am by no means an expert on such things), if you had a (presumably nonlinear) model for speech as a function of the movements of the mouth. The article didn't give too much detail. Oh well, it sounds interesting in the very least.
You may not be aware of this or have thought of it this way, but a microwave oven is basically just a big, unmodulated radio station broadcasting in the microwave band instead of the radio band.
Are you a real physics genius, or do you just play one in front of your liberal arts friends ;)
Not new, old technology. They even have a guy who uses a handheld one on South Park!
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Anybody ever pay attention to the sounds that the handlink makes on Quantum Leap? For example, it kind of goes 'waaaaahhhh' when he smacks it. That's the most obvious one, but if you listen a little more carefully, the sounds that little device makes start to emote. You can get an idea what he's reading on the screen before he actually states it.
Tom and Jerry is similar, to a degree. I ran across a cartoon of Tom and Jerry on the web a few days ago and watched it. I noticed something very interesting. The music in the cartoon responded to every little movement that the characters made. You listen to the music, for example, and tell if Jerry was tiptoe'ing or running. That was a very interesting dimension to Tom and Jerry. That is the type of element that would allow you to watch a slideshow of the show with the sound track and still keep track of what's going on.
This article was very interesting because I think it may be the start of making computer interfaces take advantage of audio responses that don't even require words. I've spent a great deal of time assigning different sounds in Windows to different events. For example, I have a very distinctive sound that ICQ makes when I recieve a message. I even went as far as to provide different people with different sounds. I noticed something very interesting, when I went to use ICQ on another machine, I ached to hear the sounds again. It was so strange not hearing them!
I hope one day Windows (or whatever OS I use in the future...) spends more effort into providing a sound-enhanced interface. That would truely provide better a better multi-tasking experience. It'd be cool if, for example, the window on the screen causing the sound was played through the right or left speaker based on where the window is on the screen. Maybe muffle it if a window is under it.
Anybody know of any products for Windows that do this today?
"Derp de derp."
Now I can't mouth obscenities about the person I'm talking with without them hearing!!! You can't also hold a "quiet" conversation with the person beside you while "politely" listening to the person on the phone...
Oh well... my boss probably needs to know about what I call him behind his back anyways. q:]
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
"Read my lips. No new taxes (today)."
...since the research is being done in Japan.
i s_being_said
Japanese has very few dipthongs.
A word that might be spelled 'Ao' using latin characters,(Â), would be pronounced as 'Ah-ow' (sort of).
Some words do change the vowels, but usually just by extending it. The word Tokyo isn't pronounced 'toe-key-o' as much as it is 'to-u-key-o-u'. The audible differences can be very slight, though. Possibly by sensing the muscle movements, it would be easier to discern the differences.
Another interesting capability would be the ability to discern mood. Consider the following:
'Yes dear, I'd <rolls_eyes>love</rolls_eyes>to have your mother visit this weekend...'
I'm not sure that I'd want my phone telling my girlfriend when I'm being sarcastic. You could have a new groupof 'tags' kind of like those you see on IRC:
roll_eyes
clench_jaw
check_watch
sneer
cringe
shake_head_in_disbelief_at_the_studidity_of_what_
You get the idea...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.