A team of researchers have shown off new technology which could herald the end of noisy, intrusive phone conversations. Scientists at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology revealed that a new device can measure the minute signals from moving speech muscles, translating it into synthesised speech even if no sound is uttered.
Explaining that in theory an entire conversation could be held without actually making an audible sound, leader of the research Professor Tanja Shultz said “I was taking the train and the person sitting next to me was constantly chatting and I thought ‘I need to change this. We call it silent communication.” However, the device is currently in its rawest form, using nine electrodes which are attached to someone’s face to pick up the electrical signals. “These capture the electrical potentials that result from you moving your articulatory muscles,” Professor Shultz explained, adding “Those are the muscles that you need in order to produce speech.”
Though still being developed and not currently for the “mass market at the moment”, Professor Shultz also explained that future uses could be for those who have lost their voice or for translation services. “You could speak in your mother tongue and the text could be translated into another language. The person that you are communicating with would then hear the synthesised voice in the other language.”
Whilst the technology has been investigated before, particularly by NASA who believed it could aid communication between unit bases and astronauts, Professor Shultz added “The difference with our system is that we can record and recognise continually spoken sentences.”
