Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Computerized Lip-Reading Crime Fighters
A Computerized lip-reading system is now under development at the University of East Anglia. The three year project will collect data for lip-reading; engineers will then design hardware and software capable of converting videos of lip-motions directly into text.
Surrey University has already built accurate face and lip tracking devices at their Centre for Vision, Speech & Signal Processing. The computer lip-reading project will continue this work. The University of East Anglia has received a substantial $765,000 grant to complete the project.
Britain's Home Office Scientific Development Branch is also interested. It is hoped that videos of potential criminals could be analyzed and their comments recorded, even in circumstances where audio recording is impossible.
Dr. Richard Harvey, senior lecturer at UEA's School of Computing Sciences, is leading the project:
"To tackle the problem we will need to use information collected from audio speech. So this project will also investigate how to use the extensive information known about audio speech to recognise visual speech.
"The work will be highly experimental. We hope to have produced a system that will demonstrate the ability to lip-read in more general situations than we have done so far."
Science fiction fans have seen this future before. In the film 2001:A Space Odyssey, the HAL 9000 computer was able to read lips.
"To be effective the systems must accurately track the head over a variety of poses, extract numbers, or features, that describe the lips and then learn what features correspond to what text.
(From Crime Fighting Potential For Computerized Lip-reading)
(HAL 9000 [background] eavesdrops on astronauts Poole and Bowman)
In the film, HAL's increasingly erratic behavior becomes a matter of concern for the astronauts. Since HAL can effectively monitor every part of the ship, the astronauts retire to a small pod to discuss the matter. Unfortunately, it turns out that somebody did research on computer lip-reading, and so HAL was on to them, with very unfortunate results for Poole.
It's interesting to note that scientists and engineers have been thinking for more than a generation about what it might take to do computerized lip-reading. A patent was issued to IBM in 1965 for a device consisting of an array of photocells that captured the reflected light emitted from the oral cavity region. This information, along with facial articulatory movements, would be essential in trying to enable Optical Automatic Speech Recognition.
Thanks to reader William Lengeman for pointing this item out; he also remarks that this system would dovetail neatly with the earlier article on Onboard Threat Detection System For Big Brother Airlines. See also an interesting 1992 NSF paper on Facial Expression Understanding.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 2/23/2007)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 2 )
Related News Stories - (" Artificial Intelligence ")
Dino From Magical Toys An AI Companion To Children
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.' - Anne McCaffrey, 1990.
AI Computer Chip Designs Passeth Human Understanding
'It seems that at one time computers were designed directly by human beings.' - Isaac Asimov, 1958.
Fine-Tune Your Infinite Book The Way You Want It
'I squatted down beside the roller and tried to make some sense out of the knobs. There were thirty-nine of them...' - Clifford Simak, 1957.
Stargate $500 Billion Investment in Artificial Intelligence
'... an artificial intelligence equal to the human.' - Edmond Hamilton, 1951.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Tiny Flying Robot Weighs Just One Gram
'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
Some Ringworld Configurations Are Stable
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
TRANSFORM Dynamic Furniture Concept Becomes What You Need
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
Harvard Metamaterials Change Structure Instantly
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
SnapBot Robots - You Choose Their Legs And They Choose Their Gaits
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
Dino From Magical Toys An AI Companion To Children
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
Humanoid Robots Building Humanoid Robots
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
Darpa 'Defiant' Unmanned Autonomous Ship
'There was no wheel, and no steersman!'
What's The Best Way To Ship And Unpack Humanoid Robots?
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
DNA Printed Book By Isaac Asimov Now Available
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
AI Computer Chip Designs Passeth Human Understanding
'It seems that at one time computers were designed directly by human beings.'
Space Traffic Management (STM) Needed Now
'...the spot was a lonely one in an uncharted region, far from the normal lanes of space traffic.'
Fine-Tune Your Infinite Book The Way You Want It
'I squatted down beside the roller and tried to make some sense out of the knobs. There were thirty-nine of them...'
SpiRobs Soft Spiral Robotic Arm
'Beware the long, flexible, glittering tentacles...'
Holland Factory 3D Printing 500 Tons Of Steak Per Month
'...I don’t understand technical things — tell me, does it ever feel anything?"
Stratospheric Solar Geoengineering From Harvard
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'
