And it works damn well. Humans were able to understand the recorded words via the vibration motor with greater than 80% average accuracy, according to the researchers’ paper. The researchers note that the “fidelity to which this is possible has been somewhat unexpected.” More great news for malware eavesdroppers: This system doesn’t require any machine learning or pattern recognition to extract the decoded sounds.
It does have a weakness though: high frequencies. So if you’re squeaking like a chipmunk, chances are the system won’t be able to pick up your sounds. This also includes some consonants and vowels like “i” and “e” which have frequencies high enough to be suppressed by the system, according to the paper.
But it’s not all wiretapping and espionage — the VibraPhone can be used for good. The researchers also see the system as a way to recover speech from the vibrations of vocal cords, facial bones or skull, which can help to build better assistive technology for individuals with speech impairment, TechCrunch reported.
And this isn’t the first time researchers have translated sweet vibrations into words — researchers at MIT, Microsoft and Adobe previously created an algorithm that extracted audio from a vibrating potato-chip bag.
Read the Original Article at Mic
