Showing posts with label speech. Show all posts

2010-03-06

KIT's Lip-Reading Cell Phone

Clipped from: BBC News - Lip reading mobile promises end to noisy phone calls

Lip reading mobile promises end to noisy phone calls

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.

Clipped from: Home

Welcome to the Cognitive Systems Lab!

At the Cognitive Systems Lab (CSL) we focus on human-centered technologies and applications based on biosignals, i.e. capturing, recognizing, and interpreting signals such as speech, muscle, and brain activity.

Clipped from: KIT - Service - Press Releases - 2010

KIT at the CeBIT 2010 – Other Exhibits Deal with Soundless Language and a Semantic Media Wiki

Soundless Communication
The Institute for Anthropomatics also has developed a technology that enables people to speak soundlessly and still to be understood by the conversation partner. This technology is based on the principle of electromyography, that is the acquisition and recording of electrical potentials generated by muscle activity. This muscle activity is measured in the face. Four applications of this technology will be exhibited. An example is soundless calling. The user can speak into the phone soundlessly, but is still understood by the conversation partner on the other end of the line. As a result, it is possible to communicate in silent environments, at the cinema or theater, without disturbing others. Another field of use is the transmission of confidential information. For the transmission of passwords and PINs, for example, users can change seamlessly to soundless language and, hence, transmit confidential information in a tap-proof manner.

Clipped from: Tanja Schultz's Home Page

Tanja Schultz
Full Professor at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

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2008-12-14

Bonnie, a Whistling Orangutan

Clipped from: The Hindu News Update Service

Orangutan whistles but can't hold a tune

Recently, a keeper was walking past the great ape house at the Smithsonian National Zoo, in Washington DC, when he heard whistling coming from inside. Thinking that one of the zoo's visitors had infiltrated the restricted area, he hurried to investigate. It turned out not to be a person who was making the noise, but one of the ape house's long-time residents, Bonnie, a 30-year-old orangutan.

Clipped from: Meet the Orangutans - National Zoo| FONZ

Bonnie – female
Bonnie, a hybrid, was born in December 1976 at the Albuquerque Zoo and was nursery reared. She came to the Zoo in December 1980. She is the mother of Kiko. She travels the O Line.

Distinguishing features
Bonnie has a large belly, a bulbous forehead, and a dark coat, closer to burgundy than orange. She weighs 160 pounds and is larger than Iris.

Clipped from: Orangutan's spontaneous whistling opens new chapter in study of evolution of speech

Insights through collaborations with Great Apes

In a paper published this month in Primates, an international journal of primatology that provides a forum on all aspects of primates in relation to humans and other animals, Great Ape Trust scientist Dr. Serge Wich and his colleagues provide the first-ever documentation of a primate mimicking a sound from another species without being specifically trained to do so. Bonnie, a 30-year-old female orangutan living at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., began whistling – a sound that is in a human’s, but not an orangutan’s, repertoire – after hearing an animal caretaker make the sound.

“This is important because it provides a mechanism to explain documented between-population variation in sounds for wild orangutans,” Wich said. “In addition, it counters a long-held assumption that non-human primates have fairly fixed sound repertoires that are not under voluntary control. Being able to learn new sounds and use these voluntarily are also two important aspects of human speech and these findings open up new avenues to study certain aspects of human speech evolution in our closest relatives.”

Clipped from: YouTube - Bonnie, a 30-year old whistling orangutan

Clipped from: Dr. Karyl Swartz, Great Ape Trust, Des Moines, Iowa

Great Ape Trust Research Program

Serge A Wich
Scientist

Institute or University
Great Ape Trust of Iowa

Dr. Rob Shumaker

Dr. Rob Shumaker
Scientist, Director of Orangutan Research

Institute or University
Great Ape Trust of Iowa

2008-05-20

Effects of Magnetic Stimulation on the Brain Speech Center (video)

clipped from www.medgadget.com

Experiencing Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

British neuroscientists are working on miniaturizing devices that would be able to deliver high tesla fields to produce magnetic stimulation within the brain, a potential therapy for migraines, and other neurological or psychiatric disorders.

clipped from en.wikipedia.org

Transcranial magnetic stimulation

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a noninvasive method to excite neurons in the brain: weak electric currents are induced in the tissue by rapidly changing magnetic fields (electromagnetic induction). This way, brain activity can be triggered with minimal discomfort, and the functionality of the circuitry and connectivity of the brain can be studied.

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk

How a magnet turned off my speech

Words failed me. I stuttered as Prof Vincent Walsh turned off the speech centre of my brain for a few thousandths of a second to demonstrate the power of transcranial magnetic stimulation, a popular way to interfere with the most complex known object in the universe.

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