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Read My Lips: Know New Faxes For those of us lacking typing skills, computer voice recognition has been a long-held dream. For those with handicaps that make it impossible to use a keyboard and mouse, voice recognition is a pressing need. But while a few examples of effective voice recognition do exist, today’s products are far from perfect. They don’t work well in noisy places and their accuracy is mediocre. But according to New York Times columnist Anne Eisenberg, breakthroughs in voice recognition may be close as scientists teach computers to read lips. Dr. Chalapathy Neti, a senior researcher at IBM (www.research.ibm.com/AVSIG/cneti.html) has been investigating the use of inexpensive video cameras to improve speech recognition. Software processes a visual image of the face and locates the corners and center of the lips. In environments with background noise, reading lips improved conventional speech recognition up to 100% compared with using audio alone. The group is now designing a headset with a small camera mounted near the boom microphone so that the image of the face stays in view no matter how a user turns his head. Soon, “read my lips” may be more than a political statement. —Charles Kreitzberg Copyright © 2009,Matt Prather |
