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2010-03-05 09:47:57
Technology that could see an end to the bane of many commuters - people talking
loudly on their mobile phones - has been shown off by researchers.
The prototype device could allow people to conduct silent phone conversations.
The technology measures the tiny electrical signals produced by muscles used
when someone speaks.
The device can record these pulses even when a person does not audibly utter
any words and use them to generate synthesised speech in another handset.
"I was taking the train and the person sitting next to me was constantly
chatting and I thought 'I need to change this'," Professor Tanja Shultz of the
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology told BBC News.
"We call it silent communication."
Translation system
The device, on show at the Cebit electronics fair in Germany, relies on a
technique called electromyography which detects the electrical signals from
muscles. It is commonly used to diagnose certain diseases, including those that
involve nerve damage.
The prototype that is on display in Germany uses nine electrodes that are stuck
to a user's face.
"These capture the electrical potentials that result from you moving your
articulatory muscles," explained Professor Shultz. "Those are the muscles that
you need in order to produce speech."
The electrical pulses are then passed to a device which records and amplifies
them before transmitting the signal via Bluetooth to a laptop.
There, software translates the signals into text, which can then be spoken by a
synthesiser.
In the future, said Professor Shultz, the technology could be packed in a
mobile phone for instantaneous communication.
"We know this is not appealing for mass market use at the moment."
However, she added, it could be initially used to help people who have lost
their voice due to illness or accident.
It could also form the basis of an instant translation system, she said.
"You could speak in your mother tongue and the text could be translated into
another language," she said.
"The person that you are communicating with would then hear the synthesised
voice in the other language."
It is not the first time that electromyography has been explored for silent
communication.
The US space agency Nasa has investigated the technique for communicating in
noisy environments such as the Space Station. It has also used the technique to
explore advanced flight control systems that do away with joysticks and other
interfaces.
Nasa, she said, explored the technique to understand simple commands.
"The difference with our system is that we can record and recognise continually
spoken sentences," said Professor Shultz.
Cebit runs from 2 to 6 March in Hanover, Germany.