NTT DoCoMo develops speech recognition without speech

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System can be used in noisy environments where other systems have problems

By Martyn Williams, IDG News Service March 03, 2004

YOKOSUKA, JAPAN -- NTT DoCoMo Inc. lifted the lid Tuesday on its five-year-old research and development (R&D) center in Japan and demonstrated a couple of the technologies the operator is working on, including a speech recognition system that doesn't require speech.

The company, Japan's largest cellular operator, last year spent around ¥150 billion ($1.4 billion) on R&D. It employs more than 1,100 people to look into new technologies and communications methods. Many of those people are based here in Yokosuka, west of Tokyo. The carrier, which also has laboratories in the U.S. and Germany, is in the process of establishing a center in China.

Research covers areas of importance to the company's business. For example, HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) data communications technology, which allows downlink speeds of up to 14Mbps (bits per second), is being developed in Yokosuka, as well as multimedia and human-machine interaction technologies, such as the speech recognition system.

The system, which is still a prototype, works by measuring the electrical activity in muscles that are used when a person speaks using a system called electromyography (EMG). This means the user still has to mouth the words as if they are being spoken but audible speech itself isn't necessary.

Three electrodes need to be touching various areas of the face to measure the electrical activity. In the demonstration, a user had sensors mounted on his thumb and first two fingers. The thumb was placed under his chin, the forefinger was held vertically touching his cheek bone and the second finger held just above his top lip. While the actual positioning may look strange, it is not particularly difficult and doesn't impede speech or the mouthing of words a great deal.
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http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/03/03/HNnttspeech_1.html