Slashdot Mirror
Detecting Speech Without Microphones
kyle90 writes "New Scientist is reporting on a new way of detecting speech without using microphones, using electrodes places on the neck that measure muscle activity and nerve impulses. Apparently the user doesn't even need to speak the words out loud in order for them to be detected. This looks like pretty neat technology; if used with cell phones it could give the user a little more privacy, and the rest of us a little more peace and quiet."
then we'd have to look at idiots moving their mouth in exaggerated motions....
How do you get the same nerve impulses in your neck if your vocal cords are not vibrating?
However, both systems come at a cost. Because the words are produced by a computer, the receiver of the call would hear the speaker talking with an artificial voice. But for some that may be a price worth paying for a little peace and quiet.
Get one of these for Ashlee Simpson, pronto!
Ears, someone ?
Cool.
This sounds almost exactly like the subvocalization technology that Ender uses to communicate with Jane in the later books.
As those who've read it will remember, silent communication while around others can lead to a whole new set of problems all it's own... Especially when it's apparent that you're communicating, but not what you're saying.
"Oh, I like geeks way better than I like humans." - Mari Sarris
.
I just said something, guess what it was?
However, both systems come at a cost. Because the words are produced by a computer, the receiver of the call would hear the speaker talking with an artificial voice.
With all due respect to Stephen Hawking, I'd rather not have my friends/parents/S.O. all sound like him.
The coolest voice ever.
The speech pattern is sent to a computerised voice generator that recreates the speaker's words.
Would you want to talk to microsoft sam? I can see this being used for speech to text conversions, but will it be possible to recreate tone, emotion? Why would you want to emulate this in a social situation anyway?
This is a great idea until you mutter some expletive under your breath while talking to your boss. I can also foresee some embarrassments for those that can't read without moving their lips.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
My first question is this: The vocal cords are resonators, they move because air is moving over them. If the cords aren't making any noise, it's because they aren't moving. If they aren't moving how does this system pick up their movement. If you have to sub vocalise (ie mumble quietly to yourself) then how is this different from the throat mike that has been around for ages. Very skimpy article for the New Scientist (all new, no science)
It is easier to square the circle than to get round a mathematician. A.De Morgan 1872
Pretty cool, I read on slashdot that NASA was working on it.
I guess it's a slow newsday.
This reminds me of some Ann mccaffrey novels where the main characters communicate via 'sub-vocalisation'. It was a skill that needed to be learned and ended up being a slight movement of the jaws and some light humming when people were talking. If I remember correctly, also through some of Vernor Vinges' novels (namely A Deepness in the Sky)
I can already see the next challenge: generating speech not based on muscle nerve signals, but directly on brain activity...
Options for military / police uses seem unlimited. However I wouldn't really want that blonde to know what my nerves are doing about her...
I'll wait for something like this to develop beyond "computer cursor control". With little more tweaking it should be possible to use this thing to, at least, send text messages...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
But that's progress. innit?
Jesus...living in the 80's? Military radios were using throat mikes back in the 80's.
Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
And the cost of implicitly having every single word of your conversation immediately recorded into digital format. Very archivable.
A lot of people using mobile-phones/phones talk louder than it's actually necessary. And not because they think speaking that loud is necessary. So this might not necessarily reduce the voice of phone users.
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2004/mar/HQ_04093_ subvocal_speech.html
Are they using different methods? If they are (no time to RTHA) that would be cool, as it might double the chances of a working system.
San Francisco Photographers
What would make the technology even cooler is a speech channel segmentation system that directs out-loud speech to one conversation/phone circuit and silent/sub-vocalized speech to another conversation. That way someone could really have two conversations at once without putting people on hold/swapping lines.
To avoid collisions, the receiver could use a buffer and sound accelerator that alternates the streams from the other side of the conversation. The only challenge would be the latency heard on the other end between your replies. Even this could be covered by stretching each spoken reply so that the recipient hears you speak for slower/longer than you actually do.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This is not new. When someone learns how to safely and effectively move the electrodes from the peripheral nerves to someplace more central, that will be new.
Isn't limited to Ender's Game. As an interface, it's a sci fi staple that goes back at least to the John Campbell days at Amazing Stories.
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And the real world observance of the phenomenon is quite a bit older. Many people subvocalize while reading -- subconsciously forming each word in their throats, even if the sound never makes it from their mouths.
Could this have interesting ramifications when used in an interrogation? Would subvocal speech include bursts of what someone was thinking but did not want to say? Or anything from the subconscious?
This technology has been previously explored by Canadian researchers. I can't find a better link right now bet here's a MacLeans story about one of the scientists. From the article: by attaching sensors over the face and throat muscles that form words, scientists can detect what a person is saying through mouth movement -- in a form of indirect lip-reading -- even in a noisy jet cockpit.
I can see it now, we don't need to experience the real thing, or her real voice. Just put these electrodes on dear, and I'll dial in the voice overlay of Susan St. James, or Rachael Welch. Oh my, I have dated myself :)
--- Old Time NeXThead
The next time you are on the phone, stop for a second and recognize that there are actually several conversations going on at the same time. The one conversation that is obvious is the vocal one, because everyone within 60 feet of you can hear it. The less obvious are the conversations you are having with yourself during the vocal conversation. You are thinking about what the person on the phone is really trying to say, you are thinking about how to cut the conversation short, you are thinking about what to have for lunch, you are thinking about the fact that you are in heavy rush-hour traffic and you are wondering why your foot hurts. The cacophony of noise that goes on inside your head at any given time is only managable by the massive power of the human brain to keep it all straight. So, and I will now get to my point, how will this little device decide what portions of which thought streams actually belong to what would be the vocal conversation? What is going to prevent it from telling your boss, during your conversation about your performance review, that you think his new hair piece looks like chewed rope?
A most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a bit.
... we will now also have to worry about them shocking us as well?
if you haven't read it, fire it up
What good are electrodes when you can't vibrate your vocal cords?
Get your Unix fortune now!
can we stop calling them vocal cords? they resemble nothing like cords. they are vocal folds, and we should think of them that way.
Now translating all of your childhood favorites! "Old McDonalds on a farm, EIDE/IO."
I see a pretty girl, I get a bulge in my pants. Pretty girls sees me, sees bulge, smacks me in the face. Not a word said yet we are all perfectly clear where we stand.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
This looks like pretty neat technology; if used with cell phones it could give the user a little more privacy, and the rest of us a little more peace and quiet.
I think history shows that people will use the rudest and most annoying use of a technology whenever possible. In this case, I think they will still use "push to talk", not speak, but have the speakers on as loud as possible to "share" the other end of the conversation.
We use it usually in places with noise like tanks. The receiver doesn't hear any background noise. Would be great for night clubs :)
Now, I'm gonna have to deal with people walking around Mumbling to themselves!
The next time I walk into an insane asylum^W^W Mental Health Facility, the only way I'm gonna be able to tell the difference between the visitors/staff and the patients is goint to be by looking for a badge.
Actually, now that I mention it...
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I can't wait to have one so i could hook it up to some speakers and talk to people without moving my lips.
Would probably creep people out... i mean... more than i usually do.. =\
Why do we call it a pair? There's only one of it!
Can we stop this, please?
if used with cell phones it could give the user a little more privacy, and the rest of us a little more peace and quiet."
But you'd look like a lunatic walking around moving your mouth but not talking?
________________________________________________
suwain_2
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Can you hear me now?
I wonder if it would work for people who lost their larynx and who have to use those vibrator things to speak. Just have a speaker with a natural sounding voice and use it that way, to speak. It would look freaky, maybe a way to put a peaker in the mouth would help. Then again if the surgery removed the larynx maybe there's no muscle respone to detect.
Anyone ever read the excellent "My Teacher Is An Alien" series when they were young? I highly recommend it to anyone with kids in elementary school - the covers may look stupid, but the series is actually a very well-thought-out 4-part scientific adventure that deals with space travel, other forms of life, inter-planetary relations, and ethics. I think "My Teacher Flunked The Planet" was the name of the fourth one, where an alien takes the teenage humans to witness suffering on Earth. Somehow they are invisible, and they use little sensors on vocal cords or motor neurons or something (can't remember exactly) to communicate simply by mouthing words. I guess it wasn't a new idea, but it thrilled me at the time.
This is very similar to David Brin's idea in the Book "Earth" with people needing to wear a strap on thier chin to measure the elctrical impulses for the very same reason.
In the book he postulates that doing so, the actual movement can be reduced, and in time, you can speak quicker with this method than you can when actually vocalizing.
This was also used in Bruce Coville's "My Teacher is an Alien" series.
...but will it be possible to recreate tone, emotion?
We, logical geeks, don't care about such puny stuff as emotions. Just give us the facts.
Who the heck needs emotions anyway?
What do you mean it would give us more privacy?
It would let the person on the other line know what we're thinking!
aircraft pilots have been using bone-induction mic's since WWII; there's no other way to block out the background noise. this is interesting because it reads from the nervous system directly
are there any good bone-induction mics for cell phone / portable usage? i spent a while looking a couple years back and turned up two things, both of which were ear-mounted. i'd much rather a throat mounted system; i imagine its much better able to pick up sound.
A press release.
That book is exactly what I thought of as well. I seem to come across half a dozen news stories every year that he already thought of ... anyone who hasn't read the book, should.
...
...
Anyway, in Earth, most people didn't use this technology even though it was available. The reason was control -- it took way too much concentration to control all of your thoughts *before* they activated subvocalizations. At best it was just annoying, like controlling a mouse on too much caffeine. At worst it could get pretty embarrassing
Speaking of which, that book, which was written in 1985, also featured an email system that held all your outgoing mail for a couple of hours in case of second thoughts, and basically predicted all the effects of effortless worldwide communication. I'm sure he wasn't the only one who got what was going on back then, but he was probably one of very few who could *also* write decent sex scenes
This has more detail on the technique: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/200 4/subvocal/subvocal.html/
I just can't imagine how a computer-generated voice produced from this technology would be better than the current text-to-speech engines (which aren't 90% as effective as human voice) that have the words in plain english before generating the speech. And it's fairly uncomfortable to listen to those programs, never mind converse with. So conversing with a program with less accuracy might make some go insane or casue wars due to some mis-understanding.
At the same time, it's interesting application for people who can't talk, but might have enough movement left in their necks to generate this speech.
--- RFC 1149 Compliant.
The only problem I see with something like that is then the people on the other end would hear things that you never meant to say
"I'm sorry, I didn't catch that, what did you say about 'killing all humans'?"
We're doing the sub-vocalization thing and building balck holes in labs... my respect for David Brin has increassed greatly... all we need a a cloned wooly mamoth... oh... we're working on that too...
damn... where are the talking dolphins...
This was also used in Bruce Coville's "My Teacher is an Alien" series.
Yes. It showed up in the 4th book "My Teacher Flunked the Planet". It was used to allow the students to watch all the atrocities that humans inflict on other humans and still talk to each other without revealing their presence.
Phones should at least ship in vibrate mode, with a big sticker attached to the switch showing the normals how to turn the ringer on (and off again!). A really good tech upgrade would let a bluetooth signal at least request switching to vibrate (notifying with a vibration), if not autoforcing it. Then people controlling spaces could request quiet, targeting just those people who carry these sophisticated personal communicators. It's outrageous that many quiet events, particularly in auditoriums, can't manage to avoid ringer cacophony because of some kind of inadequate messaging system.
--
make install -not war
lip reading:
q:
want to sweep with me?
a:
i'm gonna have to sweep with you all night to get rid of this load...
(H)
-judging another only defines yourself
until you want to discuss with your friend the best way of turning off the mobile phone. Haven't they seen "2001"?
This could make speech recognition a higher bandwidth computer input method. The keyboard is currently king, for the following reasons:
1. Speaking the amount most knowledge workers touch-type would be physically strenuous.
2. It's culturally weird to talk to a machine. Imagine sitting in a cube farm with 100 voices talking to their machines. Too chaotic.
This would seem to solve both problems. It probably has applications for the disabled too.
Although I am a card carrying member of the Human League, I for one welcome our new borg-like future. This technology shall usher in a new era of effective human to machine communication as we dutifully tend to the collective goals and chores of the hive mind.
someone should hook up that thing to my mom
Pictochat Art!!!
Half duples
so-- people talk without listening?
(I couldn't resist)
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
that someone finds a new way of detecting speech, and someones first reaction (+4!) is "Hey, we could use this to torture people!"
wtf?
Yeah I have a video that is very similar... a bunch of girls are wearing strap-ons and they give electrical impulses to each other...ohhh...wait...nevermind ;-)
Libertas in infinitum
give this as a gift to Paris and then hack her cell phone.. u will get to know what is happening in her neck :))
The collar measures the activity of muscles ("electromyographic sensors"), not the activity of nerves. So, you actually have to move muscles in order for this thing to fire.
But you can move your vocal cords without making a sound--the presence of sound depends on pushing air over them. No air--no sound. People usually don't move their vocal cords when they don't also make a sound, so this may give you all the information you need. Even if it doesn't, you don't need complete information to recognize speech.
Yes, but that's mostly because she saw you grabbing the studio microphone and shoving it down your pants....
Isn't this techonology perfect for people who have no chors, or can not speak because they had cancer and things are damages physycally?
The ear mounted microphones have the benefit of being two-way devices. You can talk and listen with them. With a bone microphone you still need some sort of headphones to listen in a high noise environment.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I don't actually have a copy of it or the script to check, but I'm very sure that Snake's CODEC he used to communicate with everyone used a very similar technology for pickup, and direct stimulation of the ear muscles for output. Just something that sprang to mind.
You stand corrected?
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Even if that technology were perfected, people wouldn't start subvocalizing into their cell phones to spare bystanders the annoyance. What good is a new gadget if no one knows you have it? (I offer as proof those morons with Nextel handsets who walk around shouting into the damned thing like a walkie-talkie with the speaker audio turned way up. Why? Because otherwise casual observers would have no clue how incredibly cool the phone wielder is!)
"Can you hear me now?"
Remember Snake doing this on MGS?
The suggestion that you could talk on a mobile phone without voice, is nonsense, unless you're talking by SMS messaging..
Voice recognition is not same as voice recording. It has to be interpreted into text.. then perhaps later synthesized into some computer voice.
What would make it useful is for example in an office environment. Currently using voice recognition by hundreds in the same room, would sound like a chicken penn, and cause way too much back ground noise.
This solution would not only keep people's voices down, but would also be much less sensitive to environmental noise.
As usual, this is most likely a neat idea, but will prove too difficult and inaccurate to make it practical. Putting electrodes on your throat is impractical as it is.. for good conductivity, you probably need to pul icky gel on the electrodes.
Maybe it would be good enough for people without vocal cords.
This is exactly what the great sci-fi writer David Brin described in his wonderful novel Earth.
might i recommend either
the Sony MDR-EX71SL or
the Sennheiser MX500
both very fine pieces of earmount sound-reproducing systems. they seem to do the job very well.
are there any good bone-induction mics for cell phone / portable usage? i spent a while looking a couple years back and turned up two things, both of which were ear-mounted. i'd much rather a throat mounted system; i imagine its much better able to pick up sound.
Help me out here: "And the ________ bone's connected to the throat bone."
besides caller id, there's no longer any way to figure out who's calling.
Me: Hello?
Phone: This is your mom (computer voice).
Me: Mom, is that you? You sound exactly like dad!
Phone: Ooops. Lemme switch to the female computer voice. (computer voice)
HD Trailers
Your brain must be working overtime... i figured from the massive amounts of spam my detector got from your motor cortex plans yesterday :)
...non-acoustic sensors that detect speech via the speaker's nerve and muscle activity
...relies on a sensor worn around the neck called a tuned electromagnetic resonator collar (TERC)
The article does not say anything about things happening in your brain. You might have been misled by:
The nerves and muscles talked about are in your neck.
The way i interpret this: the muscles in your vocal cord expand and contract even when you speak at a very low volume.... maybe even with your mouth shut.
Dont make a better sig, you insensitive clod!
considering that most people have never even learnt how to bloody whisper on the blody phone, I cannot expect them to keep bloody quiet!
I miss my rubber keyboard.(Homepage)
-Don
Glottal Enterprises EG2- PC electroglottograph
Summary
Using both an electronically controlled resistance simulating the variations in neck resistance caused by vocal fold vibratory patterns and live measurements of vocal fold contact area, it is shown that the Glottal Enterprises EG series electroglottograph (EGG) has an inherent background noise that is less than that of the Laryngograph/Kay Elemetrics EGG units by roughly 15 to 20 dB, and less than the noise in a F-J Electronics EGG unit by at least 11 dB. The measurements presented support the claim that the lower noise in the Glottal Enterprises units make them usable with almost all men, women, and children over the age of four.
Introduction
An electroglottograph is a device that transduces the small variations of transverse electrical resistance of the neck at the level of the larynx that are caused by the variations in vocal fold contact as the folds vibrate during voice production. To make this measurement, a small AC voltage of about one volt rms or less, and usually at two to three megahertz, is applied to the surface of the neck via a pair of gold-plated electrodes.
In the early 1970s, interest in the use of the electroglottographs a non-invasive means for monitoring vocal fold vibratory patterns increased when the Laryngograph company introduced a form of the EGG that produced usable waveforms with most adult subjects and older children. Their EGG (also known variously as an 'laryngograph' or 'electrolaryngograph') featured circular electrodes having concentric rings that were believed to focus the field of sensitivity of the unit within the neck, to reduce the level of noise artifacts. Proper electrode position was determined by moving the electrodes on the neck during a prolonged vowel or voiced sonorant consonant articulation until a maximum EGG signal level was obtained. This, of course, assumed a relatively stationary larynx position during the testing procedure, though some laryngeal movement could be tolerated once the nominally optimal electrode position was located, and also assumed a larynx height low enough with respect to the mandible that the electrodes can be moved above the larynx during the positioning maneuver (which may be problematic with some women and children). Since the Laryngograph EGG has been marketed for over a decade in the U.S. by Kay Elemetrics, sometimes under Kay's brand name, we refer to it here as the Laryngograph/Kay electroglottograph.
However, the Laryngograph/Kay EGG, though a significant technological advance for its time, still did not give usable waveforms for many subjects, most noticeably women (and some men) with a considerable amount of fatty and/or muscular tissue covering the larynx, and younger children. Another EGG introduced more recently by F-J Electronics appeared to present similar problems, namely, excessive noise for some subjects and difficulty in monitoring the correct placement of the electrodes on the neck.
During the 1990s, Glottal Enterprises developed a new EGG that employed a dual-channel configuration that allows the user to continuously monitor the location of the larynx with respect to the electrodes and provides to the user an unambiguous front panel indication of the proper electrode location. [M. Rothenberg, A Multichannel Electroglottograph, Journal of Voice, Vol. 6., No. 1, pp. 36-43] For subjects with a high larynx position, this feature also meant that positioning of the electrodes did not require the user to move the electrodes above the level of the larynx. When made available on the front or rear panel, the value of the display could also be recorded along with the EGG signal.
In addition to its unique ability to indicate the position of the glottis with respect to the electrodes, the new Glottal Enterprises EGG was designed with a high si
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
It's also culturally weird to jerk off in front of a machine, but you do it all the time.
-Don
"See Chief? It's working fine!"
"We're supposed to be sitting, Max!"
"We are sitting, Chief."
"I'm telling you Max, this isn't a good idea!"
"You see? Stuck!!"
"No Max! Not THAT way!!"
"AAAAAAAAAaaaaaagh!"
"censored"
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Now I can sound like James Earl Jones all the time!
That's the last time I run code posted in somebody's sig...
The principle behind this is astonishingly simple. I'm surprised it took this long for someone to think of the technological application.
Deaf people (at least the few I know) have been taught to feel their throat to learn how to speak. (ie how making certain sounds "feels" rather than sounds)
A case in point, one of my friends (deaf) was the first to notice a fire, as we were meant to (SOPs), she yelled "Fire, Fire, Fire" to alert everyone to the fire - she put her hand to her throat to ensure that she was indeed shouting.
Seems like common sense to me
Yet Another Technology That Came Too Late.
This technology *chomp* *chomp* is really *gulp* cool *slurp* Ahhhh and it's fairly *chomp* *chomp* accurate. *gulp*
I recollect seeing the demonstration of a "throat microphone" in the mid-1970s at a R&D lab in India. At that time it was being seen as a better alternative to make announcements, give directions, etc. in crowded/mob situations e.g. mining disaster, religios procession, fire-fighting, labour strike, ...
-- Raj
Ever hear of a mute button? Make something like that, except it mutes the voice talking for you.
Erm, Slashdot reported this almost exactly a year ago...
Anyone who has seriously practiced an internal / soft martial art knows that one can sense the movements of another before the other makes those motions. Mostly, this practice is taught around a metaphor of quieting one's mind/self to "hear" the other person
.
-shpoffo
Yes, sitting on the train using this tech. will make it apparent that you're a geek and a poser, and so it'll never reach mainstream popularity.
What someone needs to invent is a culture where useful things are actually acceptable... :)
.. apart from the "softening up" before/between the actual interrogations (sleep deprivation, malnourishment, sexual harassment, etc.)
And with these machines -- probably made by Diebold and operated by "private Contractors" -- the success rate is guaranteed to be 100%
Seriously almost like reading someones thoughts
And how long do you think it'll take be before they decide that the current judical system needs to be "Gitmo-ized" (even more than it already is) in order to "protect the Homeland"?
"FIRST POST!"
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
this is relevant for the deaf and hard of hearing. New thechniques of language teaching could be at the horizon. Exciting. .~.
^_^ But then again, I'm a hearing person who's only in his first course, so feel free to discount just about everything I say.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
OK, so we have some sensors (from the article) picking up the movement
of the vocal cords. Great. What you have there, my friends is
fundamental frequency. Not speech. You also need the formants.
You could get (by picking up other movements in the head) a synthetic
model of what the speaker is doing (raising the tongue in back,
lowering it in front, opening the nasal passages) and use that to
build a filter model to synthesize the speech, but such models sound
like crap.
I'd love something like this to work. But it doesn't. And it
probably never will. Your flesh is noisy. You move a lot of stuff,
and that generates/requires voltage. To do a really good job of this,
you need two things: 1. A lot of pickups, which would HAVE to be
invasive, not filtered through the skin, which distorts signals, and
2. REALLY good synthesis models understanding the attached speaker's
flesh and tubes.
The first would be unpleasant to have installed (Bone cement, anyone?
Ever see a monkey or cat wired in this way?) and the second hasn't yet
been written, after years of trying. (They've gotten much better, but
they still don't sound like people.)