21-07-2014, 12:27 PM
Silent Sound Technology
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ABSTRACT
‘Silent sound technology’ is a new technology which solves the problem of experience of talking loud over phone, travelling in train or bus, which creates much noise to hear clearly. It is an amazing technology to solve the problem of those who wish to speak but have lost their voices. . It is developed at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and you can expect to see it in the near future. When demonstrated, it seems to detect every lip movement and internally converts the electrical pulses into sounds signals and sends them neglecting all other surrounding noise. ‘Silent Sound’ technology aims to notice every movement of the lips and transform them into sounds, which could help people who lose voices to speak, and allow people to make silent calls without bothering others. The most important feature added to this technology is that "it is an instant polyglot" i.e, movements can be immediately transformed into the language of the user's choice.
. INTRODUCTION
When in a movie theatre or a noisy restaurant or a bus etc one experiences a lot of noise that hinders the ease of speaking over phone. This problem is addressed by the newest, Silent Sound Technology. This technology converts muscle contraction to into a computer-generated signal at the other end of the phone. It is a technology that helps you to transmit information without using your vocal cords. Hence person on other end of phone receives the information in audio.
The device, developed by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), uses electromyography, monitoring tiny muscular movements that occur when we speak and converting them into electrical pulses that can then be turned into speech, without a sound uttered.
1.1 Definition
‘Silent Sound’ technology aims to notice every movement of the lips and transform them into sounds, which could help people who lose voices to speak, and allow people to make silent calls without bothering others. Rather than making any sounds, one’s handset would decipher the movements one’s mouth makes by measuring muscle activity, then convert this into speech that the person on the other end of the call can hear.
“We currently use electrodes which are glued to the skin. In the future, such electrodes might for example be incorporated into cell phones,” said Michael Wand, from the KIT.
HISTORY
The first documented experiments dealing with EMG started with Francesco Redi’s works in 1666. Redi discovered a highly specialized muscle of the electric ray fish (Electric Eel) generated electricity. By 1773, Walsh had been able to demonstrate that the Eel fish’s muscle tissue could generate a spark of electricity. In 1792, a publication entitled De Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari Commentarius appeared, written by Luigi Galvani, in which the author demonstrated that electricity could initiate muscle contractions. Six decades later, in 1849, Dubois-Raymond discovered that it was also possible to record electrical activity during a voluntary muscle contraction. The first actual recording of this activity was made by Marey in 1890, who also introduced the term electromyography. In 1922, Gasser and Erlanger used an oscilloscope to show the electrical signals from muscles. Because of the stochastic nature of the myoelectric signal, only rough information could be obtained from its observation. The capability of detecting electromyographic signals improved steadily from the 1930s through the 1950s, and researchers began to use improved electrodes more widely for the study of muscles. Clinical use of surface EMG (sEMG) for the treatment of more specific disorders began in the 1960s. Hardyck and his researchers were the first (1966) practitioners to use sEMG. In the early 1980s, Cram and Steger introduced a clinical method for scanning a variety of muscles using an EMG sensing device.
CONCLUSION
Thus Silent Sound Technology, one of the recent trends in the field of information technology, implements ”Talking without Talking”. It will be one of the innovations and useful technologies and in near future. This technology will be use in our day to day life. ‘Silent Sound’ technology aims to notice every movement of the lips and transform them into sounds, which could help people who lose voices to speak, and allow people to make silent calls without bothering others. Rather than making any sounds, handsets would decipher the movements the mouth made by measuring muscle activity, then convert this into speech that the person on the other end of the call can hear. So, basically, it reads lips. It would lead us to a noiseless tomorrow.