A completely sci-fi new technology is being developed by NASA: a system of speaking into a microphone without having any words or sound come out of your mouth.
The trick is in the fact that when we speak the nerves in our throat bring the signals to our mouth and voice box. If we mouth out the words that we want to say but don’t actually say them outloud, those nerves are still working an can be tapped to record the signals sent. The technology has already been used to makea mobile phone call. From thefeature.com:
The electrical nerve signals are delivered from the sensors to an amplifier and a digital signal processor that filters out the noise. Finally, software scours the data to identify the signature patterns corresponding to words that the system was programmed to recognize. When the silent speech technology was unveiled, the software was trained to identify six words such as “stop,” “go,” “alpha,” and “omega,” and ten digits. Since then, they’ve increased its vocabulary to around twenty words and begun teaching the system to detect the telltale EMG signals of vowels and consonants, the first step in building a full-blown speech recognition system.
-David Pescovitz
TheFeature :: Talking Loud And Saying Nothing
NASA Develops System to Computerize Silent, ‘Subvocal Speech’
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