 I guess it would be a dumb question if I asked how many people found others talking loudly on phones to be immensely irritating.
Unfortunately I count myself as one of those annoying people, as I have a deep voice and when I talk softly it tends to get drowned out by the background noise. Therefore the news of a commercial product allowing us to communicate silently being available within the next few years could be a godsend.
Initially designed by NASA for use in noisy environments, it was soon discovered that it could be used in various other manners such as in secure communications, medical applications and gaming. It works by interpreting the signals sent by the nervous system to the vocal tract. The signals measured by the sensors are then translated into words.
That was the good news. The bad news is that it's is fairly limited in it's current incarnation. Like the first voice recognition applications before it, it is currently trained to recognise specific users. It also has a limited vocabulary, but in he interview it sounds as if they may be more focussed on recognising vowel and consonant sounds and building up from there.
Having been frustrated by voice recognition systems in the past, all I can say is that I hope they have better luck with their project than I did with mine!
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