Mobile Phone Reading Mouth Developed in Japan

Japan developed a mobile phone that enables communication without speaking by reading off the motion of lips.

Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported on the 22nd that NTT Tokomo developed a new cell-phone that can recognize the movement of lips by the censor attached at a dial button, and convert the motion to voice signal so that the other side of the phone could understand. In the experiment, it successfully distinguished Japanese vowels of A, I, U, E and O, and NTT Tokomo explained that it could technically distinguish consonants, too.

When this phone is set up, one can talk over a telephone even in a noisy place, and avoid being hatred by speaking loudly in a public place. NTT Tokomo thinks that it could commercialize this phone in 5 years, and is developing a method to apply this technology to e-mail service through mobile phone, as this technology can be used for inputting sentences.

Young-Ee Lee yes202@donga.com