The latest technology developed by researchers could herald the end of having to listen to other people’s noisy mobile phone conversations as you go about your day – a prototype has been developed which enables people to have a silent phone conversation.
As incredible as it sounds, it’s true.
The technology behind this new mobile phone development works by measuring the tiny electrical pulses our muscles create when we chat. The device then records these electrical signals even when the person does not speak these words out loud, and uses them to create synthesised talking in the other phone.
The name for all this clever science is the electromyography technique, which can pick up on electrical pulses from people’s muscles.
The prototype device is on show at the Cebit electronics fair in Germany, and uses 9 electrodes that are placed on a user’s face to pick up on the pulses. These pulses are then transferred to a device which amplifies them and then sends the signal to a laptop using Bluetooth connection. The laptop converts the signals into text, which is then vocalised by a synthesiser.
The professor behind this software, Professor Tanja Shultz of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, believes the technology could be placed in mobile phones.
Speaking to BBC News, Professor 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.”
She admitted that using the technology in mobile phones may not be popular – but it could have plenty of other uses. For example, to help people communicate in different languages, translating and then speaking using the synthesised voice in the other language.
Could we soon be chatting on our mobile phones, in silence?
(Source: NBC News)
Mar 10, 2010
Noisy Phone Calls To Be Silence Soon?
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