Artificial Tongue

Anton, a mechanical tongue and jaw that has successfully mimicked the muscular activity involved in producing certain vowel sounds will be presented at this year's International Society of Artificial Life conference. Robin Hofe of the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom says Anton has the potential to help improve speech recognition software. Existing systems are working with larger databases of recorded speech, but their performance has not significantly improved because the way people talk is not steady and uniform. Speech can be affected by where people are and what they are doing. The researchers believe Anton will be a key to learning more about how the mouth produces sounds, since obtaining data from inside the human mouth might not be the best approach. The researchers also want to embed artificial muscles in Anton to make it more realistic, and eventually have it produce sound. The previous test involved MRI scans to compare the movements of Anton with those of real mouths.